Hebrews 11:16  But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.

I am looking forward with great anticipation to eternity with God. I will have a body like Jesus, it won’t age, ache, get stiff, get fat, or be senile. I will have a mind that remembers everything, and can think like Jesus. I will be with Jesus and fellowship with Him forever. There won’t be any disease, war, politics, death, sin, elections, taxes or conflicts of any kind. It really is impossible to comprehend such a place even in our wildest imaginations.  I think about heaven a lot now, and try to visualize what it will be like,in every way.

Very few people really think much about eternity because it seems to unreal, almost like a fairy tale.  I believe that God is pleased when we think a lot about being with Him and eternity, and as we do He will work in our heart and make it seem more and more real. I choose to think about my life after death so much that the result is total freedom from the fear of death or any disease that would result in death.

I am not wishing or wanting to go sooner than God’s plan, and I am wanting to bear as much fruit as possible before I am done serving God in this life. I have my eyes on the finish line and I am not going to coast across but sprint as fast as I can. The more real eternity is in my mind and heart, the stronger my faith in the coming life, the more joy, enthusiasm, and freedom I will live each day here.

B

Almost every person would like to manage their time better. We all have 168 hours in a week, we are exactly the same. But there are those people that we know that seem to get twice as much done in their day as we do. There is a reason that they do, and those reasons are consistant principles of time management. Time management has to do with what we have accomplished in a given amount of time that matters . The most significant principle of all that there are is to keep careful records of all that you  do each  day. On a simple spread sheet put areas of work and life across the top, and down the side put the dates. Each day put in the amount of time you spent on each area, and then once each week total the amount of time under each area of work and life. Do this religiously every night before you go to bed. Keeping track of our time makes us much more aware of how we waste our time, and also there comes a growing desire to do better. I have kept track of how I spend my time for many years now. This daily discipline helps me keep my life in balance between the different areas of responsibility. Manage time well and you can go fishing!

Proverbs 11:2  When pride comes, then comes dishonor,  But with the humble is wisdom.

I am pretty sure that pride is my biggest struggle in life. We all see it in others quite easily , but we  don’t see it in ourselves very well. The lack of humility  and the presence of pride shows up in our life in so many different ways.  I think just about every character flaw that we could have has pride as it’s source or cause. In the Bible it seems like pride is the most disliked character flaw by God. God wars against the proud, he is apposed to the proud, He punishes the proud, He resists the proud, and He doesn’t listen to the prayers of the proud. God causes us to fail in life to try and make us humble. God will cause people to insult us to  try and  keep us humble. God will bring physical sickness into our life to try and keep us from exalting ourselves. Life would be so much more enjoyable if I could just get this humble thing figured out on my own so I don’t have to learn it through God’s school. I think about my attitude and behavior often trying to become a humble man. As I think about the day in the evening I often groan as I recall words and actions that were obviously driven by pride, and I feel ashamed and embarrassed by my obvious immaturity, and hope not to many people noticed. Sunday evening is the worst time for me as I think about and remember the weekend at church and things I said and did. Oh Lord, how in the world are You going to use me and bless me as a pastor when I am so driven by self glorification. I will confess, repent, and give it it another try tomorrow.

Proverbs 10:19  When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable,  But he who restrains his lips is wise.

One  of the things that most of us do when we are in any kind of hassle with someone is talk to much, especially if we are being accused, lectured, or blamed. Our automatic defense system seems to think that the more we talk the better we will appear to those we are talking to. But it ain’t so!  The main problem in our thinking is that we think we have to win if there is a disagreement, and the desire to win tends to shift our mouth into high gear. I like to win in checkers, chess, bicycle races, pinnocle, and poker, but I don’t have to win in a relational conflict. Jesus says that if we humble ourselves He will exalt us, but if we exalt ourselves He will humble us. So if we think we won the argument we probably lost it in the end. A relational peacemaker is one of the most esteemed people,in the eyes of God.  He gives them great blessings, and one of them is “authority”. This “authority” from God is not title or position, it is the kind of authority that Jesus had. When He spoke people listened, and when He led people followed.

In the last two blogs I have described JBC’s “Five Days of Prayer” event, and the blessings that I experience from a large amount of time spent in the prayer room praying with many different people. The ones I mentioned were Inner strength, joy, peace, and hearing from God concerning His will for my life and that of our church.

(5) Another great blessing is increased faith in God, His promises, and especially in the power of prayer. The more I pray, especially corporately with other believers, the more I believe without a doubt that when we get to heaven we will see huge crowds of people who are there because we prayed much. When that kind of faith grows praying becomes exciting, gratifying and much easier to motivate myself to do. In the book of Romans it says Abraham grew strong in faith. Jesus  main critism of His disciples was their “little faith”. I want be a man of great faith, and with every  prayer event I grow stronger.

(6) One  of the main requirements to be a good leader of a church is clear vision for the church for the days ahead.  During the “Five Days of Prayer” I get so many crazy ideas of things I should do in the future and also what our church should do, Next week I will spend at least 5 hours writing goals and vision for JBC for the next 20 years. I probabably won’t be around that long,  I will be 88 years old, but I might be so I will be ready.

(7) When you sit in a room with 20 other people praying for hours, you are praying to God, not the wall. The result is that my awareness of God’s presence grows stronger and stronger, and when the prayer event is over I carry that sense of His presence with me.  Being genuinely aware that God is with me, and that He sees everything I do, hears everything I say, and knows everything that I think makes a huge difference in daily life in the absence of fear, and the willingness to take risks.

Prayer is a great blessing, not an obligation.

I finished 27 hours of prayer this morning with 13 more to go by 10 pm tomorrow evening. There have probably been a couple hundred different people  down to pray during Our “Five Days of Prayer”, some for 1 hour and others much more, with the grand total being around 1,000 hours during the five days. We pray for lots of different people for lots of different reasons, and only God knows all that He has done for people because we took the time to pray to God on their behalf. Though all my praying is for others, I receive a lot of personal blessing as a result of the time spent.

(1) The most obvious blessing to me is energy. Not physical energy but inner energy. Probably a better word is passion and fire, the strong desire to do more and more with my life for God and others. At my age with Parkinson’s that is a huge blessing.

(2) Another very obvious blessing is peace, the total absence of anxiety, worry, and stress. Again, that is of immeasurable worth in my life. Not many people can say they are worry/stress free and know why.

(3) Joy and happiness is what most people desperately want, but they are looking for it in circumstances, events, and things. God gives joy. He gives it to those who spend time with Him. As a result of years of these prayer events I am as sure of this as I am that food gives strength and sleep gives rest.

(4) A very strong sense of what God’s will is for my life is probably my most anticipated blessing of these prayer events. In a room full of people who are all praying to God the devil and his demons will be absent and the result is a very real clarity in thought that makes it so much easier to hear God’s voice in my thoughts. I take a lot of notes while in the prayer room so I don’t forget what I am thinking which I am sure is from God.

Jefferson Baptist Church or JBC finished day 3 of our 5 days of prayer tonight. During this 5 days, Monday through Friday, we pray from 5 to 10 am and 5 to 10 pm , 10 hours each day. We pray in a room that can hold about 40 people which is about the maximum number that shows up at any one time, and we have tables and chairs with papers with things to pray about on the tables. We start praying at 15 minutes after each hour and quit praying right on the hour so we have a 15 minute break for people to come and go, chat and get a cup of coffee. During the pray time one person prays out loud at a time with the rest agreeing silently or praying silently for something else. We average about 20 people in the prayer room each hour. We have  one of these “5 day prayer events”  4 times a year.

My goal each time is to pray 40 of the 50 hours. The reason is that the 5 days spent praying an average of 8 hours every day with 20 other people who are passionate, who have great faith, and desire that God work in our country and community, does amazing things for me. The most obvious is that I am significantly energized. People with Parkinson’s usually struggle with some level of depression. The time I spend praying totally coquors this problem. During the time we are praying I get a ton of idea, usually about ministry, but sometimes about bicycling across the USA. Almost all of my goals each year are written during a 5 day prayer event.

I am always sad when they are over in spite of all the time they take.

Last year I started an aquaponics operation with a greenhouse, a 300 gallon tank for fish, and two 3×12 foot grow beds full of 3/4 inch pea gravel in which I grew my plants. The tank was full of 100 Tilapia which I bought as little bitty fry and they grew up to be big fat 2 pound fish. The water from the tank was pumped into the grow beds where the gravel filtered out all the fish poop and the water was then dumped back into the fish tank. The whole process was set up with timers so it all happened automatically. The plants grew like crazy with all the fish poop, plus grow lights, and the water was heated up to 65 degrees for the fish, and it helped the plants to grow fast as well. It was a ton of fun learning about the process, building it, and then eating the vegetables and fish. I pulled the plug on the system and harvested all the fish about 10 months ago because I was getting ready to leave on my 2 month bicycle trip to Florida and I didn’t want to leave our daughter Sherri with the responsibility of taking care of it, there was always something that was going wrong and needing fixed. The whole system has sat idle since then, but I am going to get it started up again in the next couple of months, but this time I am going to raise channel cat fish instead of tilapia. The tilapia can’t survive in water under 60 degrees and it was to expensive to keep the water heated up to that temperature. Channel cat fish can handle just about any temperature of water. I will heat the water up a little bit with a solar system in the summer and I will pump the water through some coils, in my wood stove in the winter so the fish will grow faster as well as the plants. Wow, I love a project like this.

Proverbs 4:23  Watch over your heart with all diligence,  For from it flow the springs of life.

I have some cameras located around my house that record everything, and if motion is detected my phone will beep and I can look on the screen on my phone and see what is happening. It is a way of guarding my house and the stuff in it. Why would I do such a thing? Well, it does have some worth and value, and I would like to keep it, at least from someone who would steal it.

How do I guard my heart? How do I watch over my heart with all diligence?  With all diligence, that means it is very important that we do this. Our “heart” is the center of who we are. Our heart feels joy, it gets depressed, it is wicked from birth, it is transformed and changed by the power of God. Our heart is incredibly impacted by what we feed it. If we feed it stuff and philosophy of the world from poor choices on television, videos, books etc it will become selfish and prideful, but if we feed our heart the Word of God and good teaching based on the Word of God, then our heart will become strong, pure, and godly.

I took Patty on a date this afternoon to Applebee’s and they gave us a menu, from which we chose what we would eat. We need to choose carefully and with great diligence what we put into ourselves through our eye and ear gate. It is not an innocent or unimportant choice what we watch, read, and listen to. Proverbs says that those who think so are fools.

Proverbs 3:5-6  Trust in the Lord with all your heart  And do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him,  And He will make your paths straight.

God is all powerful. God is infinitely powerful. While looking at pictures of the vastness of the universe I am reminded again of how powerful God is as I acknowledge that  He is created it all from nothing. The almighty God knows me very well. He knows every detail of my life. He knows what I am thinking and in fact knows what I will think before I think it. Proverbs 3:6 says that He will make my paths straight. That means I will know what His perfect will is for my life, that He will give me the strength to live His perfect will, that I will have the resources to accomplish His perfect will, and that I will have the courage to attempt His perfect will.

The promise that He will make my paths straight is conditional, that is I have to do something first and then He will do His part. My part is to trust Him. Once while on a mission trip to Vietnam a group of us went on a tour of Hanoi in pedicabs, which is a bicycle with a seat on the front. I  sat in the seat and this old, skinny, very small Vietnamese man peddled me through terrible, aweful. Unbelievable, absurd traffic. After a few minutes the old man said to me, “You will enjoy the ride more if you put all your weight in the seat”. At first it seemed like a strange statement, and then I realized that he was asking me to trust him to get me where we were going safely.

I said OK and worked at relaxing and looking at the beauty all around me of this old, quaint Vietnamese city, and began to enjoy the adventure more and more.