Proverbs 22:24  Do not associate with a man given to anger;  Or go with a hot-tempered man,

several years ago I made a commitment to totally eliminate anger from my life. It took several years of constant vigilance, confession, recommitting, praying, journaling, but I have gotten to the place now in my life where I rarely get even a little irritated about anything. I wish I had made that commitment years ago instead of waiting until I was 60 to work on it.

I feel the emotion of anger often, but I don’t let the emotion control the way I talk, or act, or even think. The emotion of anger is strong, but it will go away very quiclkly if not “fed”, or acted on. Once I made the commitment to conquer this bad habit in my life I knew I needed a plan to make it happen, so here is the plan that I used.

1. Every morning I pray a prayer of commitment, and ask the Lord for the strength to keep the commitment. “Today, Lord, I will not get angry, not even a little bit irritated at anybody no matter what they do, but instead I will immediately forgive them because You have forgiven me of everything I have done. I can’t do this, Lord, please give me the strength to keep this commitment.

2. I found and memorized well a half dozen Bible verses on anger, and then whenever I started to feel angry or think angry thoughts I set my mind on one of the verses and started going over it in my mind. It didn’t take long meditating on one of my anger verses for for the irritation to be gone.

3. I journal most evenings about the day so I would journal about any times of speaking or acting on my anger describing what I had done, and then writing out what I should have done.

4. Every time I spoke or acted in anger I would confess it to God as sin, never justifying or excusing it because of another persons behavior or because of being tired or anything else.

5. If I did say something in anger to another person I would go to them and express my sorrow and regret for what I had said and how I had acted, and ask them to forgive me. I would try to do this before the day ended. I did not enjoy doing this at all so my resolve to conquer this problem in my life would grow tremendously.

6. I would act out situations that were regular problems in my life where I tended to fail in my commitment to the Lord. Two regular times that were not people related was when I would play golf and when I would work on a car or my pickup and I would struggle getting a nut off or break a bolt and get instantly upset. I would see that situation in my mind and then I would act right and repeat it over several times in my mind in order to permenantly program right behavior in my mind.

7. I have taken advantage of every opportunity to teach, coach, and model to others who are struggling with anger on how to conquer it in their life. I only do this with people who want the help and are responsive to my help. I work hard at doing this with grace and humility.

Proverbs 21:1. The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord;  He turns it wherever He wishes.

God is all powerful and plans and ordains, but we the church, the “Body of Christ” and the “Bride of Christ” have been given authority to rule and reign with Christ, and to accomplish His will in the world today. Our main authority is in and through the discipline of prayer. In John 15:7-8 Jesus says, “If you abide in Me and My Words abide in you ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you”.  This prayer is not for the purpose of making our life comfortable, that will happen in eternity, prayer was given to us to change things and to change people. Proverbs 21:1 says the Kings heart, the Presidents, is in God’s hand like water and He can turn it wherever He wants”. We will determine that by our prayers. Not easy, comfortable prayers that take little time and require little sacrifice but “much praying”. Those who pray much will move the hand of God, that hand which holds the heart of Mr Trump. I am committed to praying much.

Proverbs 20:3  Keeping away from strife is an honor for a man, But any fool will quarrel.

I used to argue a lot. They would start out as a friendly discussion, and then would quickly descend into heated discussion, to debate, and to a hot argument. One day I read this verse, which I had read many times before, but this time I saw myself as the fool that will argue about most anything. It was like all of a sudden this verse became a mirror where I could see myself clearly, and I didn’t like what I saw. I wrote a clear commitment of how I would act and deal with controversy when it came up in my life. I basically promised myself and God that I would not argue any more about anything. I haven’t conquered this yet, but I am much better than I used to be. When I find myself in a discussion that is becoming an argument I practice this verse in Provers 17:14 “The beginning of strife is like letting out water,  So abandon the quarrel before it breaks out.” I abandon the argument, change the subject or simple say, “you are right”. It is difficult because I Feel like I have lost a contest, and nobody likes to lose.

Proverbs 18:20-21  With the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach will be satisfied; He will be satisfied with the product of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

Death and life are in the power  of the tongue. My desire is to give life with the words that I speak to people, spiritual life, eternal life. I have established 5 axioms to grow the power of my mouth to speak words that give life.

#1- out of the same spring fresh water and salt water do not come. I want to eliminate totally from my life the “salty” words, words that are negative, critical, complaining, angry, unkind,hurtful and boastful. The presence of those kinds of words in my conversations and relationships will infect the words that I speak while teaching the Bible, while teaching my grandkids, and while talking to Patty.

#2- what I think about most of the time is how I will speak. I will take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, I will listen to my thoughts and when I first start thinking wrong thoughts I will choose to think about something good.

#3- Faithfully reading the Bible and memorizing it will powerfully program my mind and my heart to think and speak good.

#4- Watching television is a fast way to infect my mind and heart with wrong and foolish words.

#5- Hearing myself while I speak is a skill that I must learn. Many speak incredibly mean words and seem oblivious to what they are saying and the hurt that they are causing.

I want to become very sentiment to the words I speak, and hear myself well.

Proverbs 17:22  A joyful heart is good medicine,  But a broken spirit dries up the bones.

One  of the things I have learned to do, but only after I believed that I actually could learn how to do it, is choose to be happy and  joyful. Most adults think that they can’t control their level of joy , it is all a result of events and circumstances.  My emotions initially respond to the circumstances going on around me, and then when I recognize what emotional state I am in I can choose to change it. As I work on the self-control in me to not let my emotions be in charge of how I act, think, and talk I get better and better at doing it. Initially I choose to act happy when I feel sad, or angry, or disappointed, or bitter. As I act happy on the outside, that is I smile, be gracious to people, speak positive, edifying words, and think grateful, and happy thoughts, it only takes a few minutes before I am feeling the way I am acting. Everything is so much better when you are feeling happy, and it is so freeing to know that I am not a victim, I can choose joy.

All the rain of late reminds me of a favorite Bible passage of mine in  Hebrews 6:7-8,

“for ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.”

In this passage there is the word “useful” and the word “worthless”.  The useful man receives a blessing from God and the worthless man is cursed by God. The useful man produces results from the rain that falls on him, vegetables  that help other people, and the worthless man produces thorns and thistles as a result of the rain, and is nothing but an irritant to others.

The same rain falls on both, but one produces good and the other produces bad, one is useful to God and others, and the other person is worthless to God and others. Every morning in my “Prayer of Commitment” I make a commitment to God saying, “Today, Lord I will not complain or grumble, not even a little bit, about anything, especially about anything that is obviously directly caused by You, like the rain.”

When I first started praying that prayer of commitment in the morning that contained numerous promises to God, I didn’t make much progress in some of the things I was committing to, but after continually saying the prayer every morning, after a while, a long while it seemed,  I started to change. Once change starts it gets easier and faster.

We like ourselves so much more when we are not a sour, grumpy, complaining person, and everybody around us likes us much more as well.

I am preaching in the Saturday night, and Sunday morning at 9 and 11:30 am services. Pastor Mike Dedera is the main preacher now, but he will just be getting home from Africa so I get to preach. Why do I preach? Many people think that in this age of computers and high tech electronics that preaching is terribly outdated and ineffective  as a tool to communicate truth. It is important for me to remember that God chose  preaching, and said that the world would call it foolishness.

So what is my reason for preaching, what is my goal, what am I hoping will happen. Some would think that it is teaching people how to act and behave in a loving way. My reason is to move people intellectually, emotionally, and cognitively closer and closer to God so that they would have a truly intimate relationship with Him, and they would become like Him in character.

If you look carefully at those words and think about them you will realize what an amazing statement that is “move people closer to God so they can know Him and become like Him.” Some are able to make that happen, but most are not. I think the key is that I pray for every person in our church each week and amoung other things I ask God if He would  please work supernaturally in their life and open their heart.

It is quite amazing to think about that I could teach the Word of God, and that God would work in people’s hearts.

I was gone hunting for 5 days and a couple hours before I got home Patty left for California to visit her two sisters and their families for a week. We are apart fairly often as I travel to speak and do crazy things like ride a bicycle to the Atlantic Ocean. One of the strengths of our marriage is we love each other very much and truly enjoy each other and being together, but we don’t possess each other and restrict each other’s ministries and pursuits because of our own need for our spouse. It obviously is easier to do that now with no young children at home that we are responsible for. At this stage in my life I have this driving desire to bear more fruit now than ever before and have shifted my ministry life into overdrive. Patty does a lot at the church with children’s ministries but is strongly drawn to her family, especially her grand kids and does as much with them and serves them as much as possible. I know husbands and wives who are jealous of the ministries, people, causes, and activities of their spouse. That is to bad because it seems that the fulfillment and rewards of our respective lives which we both experience makes our time together so much more special. Well, gotta go. Patty is home, and special times are about to happen😀

Starting in 1990 when I went to a prayer conference in Argentina I have been in about 40 different countries of the world, including Vietnam, China, Russia, Bosnia, and Lebanon. I have been to Sierra Leone, West Africa 23 times since 2002 where our church has been part of about 22 church plants, 20 plus schools, a Bible college, well drilling and a number of other projects. Sierra Leone had a 20 year civil war that was aweful in regards to the cruelty and mutilation that took place, and then recently they had the Ebola plaque which resulted in thousands dying. The standard of living is close to the lowest in the world, the government and police force are corrupt constantly trying to get bribe money from us while we are in country. The mortality rate of children under two is very high, everybody gets malaria on a regular basis, the average daily income is about $2 per day with about 80 % unemployment, there is very little in the way of medicine, education, or electrify. Most people live in a house made with mud with a roof of leaves that obviously leaks in the rainy  season . Patty and I had a goal of taking all of our 8 kids to Sierra Leone or another very poor country for a short term mission trip so that they would realize how incredibly blessed we are in this country, and that it would be so terribly selfish and ungrateful to complain about anything here. We accomplished that goal and it did and continues to influence the gratefulness factor in the life of our kids. Grumbling, complaining, fussing, ungratefullness, is so repulsive to God.

The character trait of diligence is super important to develope in our own life if we want to bear much fruit for the Lord. We need to be systematic about growing this trait in our life as a young track star is about improving his speed in his event who is dreaming of qualifying for the Olympics,  or a college basketball player who is aspiring to a career in the NBA would practice his skills. One of the strongest characteristics of our “flesh” that we were all born with is laziness, proneness to apathy, desire for comfort, and procrastination. There is a life long pull to to take it easy and coast.

I have a prayer time each morning first thing that takes about one minute, and included in this morning prayer of commitment is this “Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my resolve to do your will with all diligence.”

Becoming diligent is hard work, but diligence is not synonymous with working hard. I know from personal experience one can get up early and go to bed late, and expend a lot of energy, and be very busy, and not watch TV or get lost in social media binges—can appear to work hard—and still not get much done that really matters.

A great definition of diligence that I read in another blog that I have adopted as mine is “Diligence combines a willingness to work hard with a discerning focus, a sense of urgency, a vigilant carefulness and faithful perseverance.”

Two Bible passages that I meditate on in my pursuit of becoming a more diligent man are Ephesians 5:15-17 “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” , and John 15:8, “God the Father is glorified when we bear much fruit, and so prove that we are true disciples of Jesus Christ”.