It is one month until my birthday, and my tradition is that I start my new goals for the next year on my birthday, so I am starting to write them now. Many of my goals are the same as previous goals. I don’t really need to write them down as a goal because they are an established habit with me now after all the years of doing them, but I use my goals as an example as I teach goal setting to others, so I include them. I will have 76 goals this year because that is how old I will be on October 27th. But after I get them all written, I will make a condensed version of about 40 goals that will be a challenge to accomplish, and I will read them every day to help keep up my motivation to pursue them. For the next month, I will pray and think about what should be included and which ones I probably ought not to pursue. Some of them I will write down, and then in a couple of days, I will take them off and then put them back on again

One of those “on again – off again” goals is a bicycle trip to Alaska. Last year’s trip didn’t go very well, but I know why and could make some adjustments. I know that physically, I am either past doing this kind of thing or close to it. It would undoubtedly be easier not to do this. But I would like to make one more trip, and Alaska was my first bicycle trip. I would make 60 miles the maximum number of miles per day we would ride, we would have a support vehicle, and I don’t want to be gone for more than 35 days. From my house to Fairbanks, it is 2500 miles, so we would need to pick and choose what sections we would bike and what sections we would drive. We could drive 1,000 miles from our house into British Colombia in two days, take 25 days to ride 1500 miles to Fairbanks, rest a day with our daughter Shelly’s family, and then take five days to drive home. Or we could bike five days from our house, ride 500 miles in one day, bike for five days, ride in the rig a day, and then bicycle again, keeping up that pattern to Fairbanks, and then do the same all the way home, taking a different route. That would be seven days driving in the support vehicle for 3500 miles and 25 days riding bicycles for 1,500 miles. However we do it, I think it is a goal I can accomplish. It would be a challenge but fun and beautiful.

So, I need a support vehicle and a driver. I think my brother, Cliff, and his wife, Kathy, will ride with me; anyone else? If interested, let me know.

Today was my second Sunday preaching at Jefferson Evangelical Church in Jefferson. Today was also the formal commissioning of me as the church’s pastor. I am not abandoning JBC as I take on this new role.

I preach at JBC’s Wednesday service each week, I teach my Leadership class material on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I am actively involved in helping the “Senior’s Ministry on Wednesdays from 2:00 to 4:00 pm, I am on the Leadership Team of “Men’s Ministry” at JBC, I am coaching four different Pastors in different churches, I am mentoring a young man at JBC who wants to go into ministry, I coach and train people at JBC who want to start a ministry at JBC, I attend the 8:30 am service on Sunday mornings at JBC, I am on the Elder board, I am part of a “Men’s Accountability Group” and working on starting two more groups, and I participate in three different corporate prayer times at JBC. I have been at JBC for 48 years as its pastor, and it will always be my church, but now “Jefferson Evangelical Church” is my church as well. Why do this?

I love the Church of Jesus Christ and strongly believe in God’s desire to see unity between various churches, especially those in the same town. I have the time now that Pastor Mike Dedera is preaching at JBC; I have the desire to preach and the passion to do as much as possible with my life for the Lord, and one of my life mottos is, “When God gives you an open door, walk through it, He will give me what I need to succeed.” My goal is to preach here for two years, maybe more, and to mentor someone who would take my place, love the church, and serve it well.

Yesterday and today were woodcutting days at our house. We split and stacked about six cords of wood. I am totally tuckered out tonight trying to keep up with grandkids working all day. It feels good to be tired from good old physical work. I enjoy working with my grandkids and seeing their work ethic in action; they are good kids. We targeted several character traits when we raised our kids, and diligence was one of the main ones. It is good to see that our grandkids are being taught well the importance of diligence in their lives. My parents did a very good job of parenting me and instilled in me the value of working hard at whatever we did. My work ethic was probably my number one strength in my Pastoral ministry over the years. Chuck Swindoll said that the most significant problem for most pastors was laziness. One of my Dad’s words of encouragement when I struggled in the early years of pastoring was, “You can succeed at anything if you are willing to work hard until you accomplish your goal. Key Bible verses in this area for me are, Colossians 3:23-24
“Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.”

Fruit flies are everywhere in our house. Patty is peeling and cutting up apples in order to make apple sauce. I love apple sauce, but I hate fruit flies. I wonder where they come from, and why when apples are in our house here they come. I have a glass of apple juice that I am drinking while reading and writing, and I am sure I have swallowed several dozen flies trapped in my juice. I googled fruit flies to see if I was going to get some weird disease ingesting them, but they appear harmless. They are so small you can’t even count them as a source of protein. They don’t bite and rarely even land on me, but sometimes, one hovers an inch away between my eyes and makes me cross-eyed.

Fruit flies are just big enough to see. Like fruit flies, there are germs and bacteria all around me that I can’t see, and I suspect they are also in my apple juice. And then there are demons everywhere around us. I certainly hope none of those dudes got into my apple juice. There is a huge unseen realm around us that is real, annoying, and dangerous.

God has many roles in our lives, and one of them is protector. There are dangers everywhere around us, and we are incapable of protecting ourselves from most of them. Check out this Psalm. I have memorized it and often fall asleep while meditating on it running it through my mind.

Psalms 3:1-7 O Lord, how my adversaries have increased!
Many are rising up against me.
Many are saying of my soul,
“There is no deliverance for him in God.”
But You, O Lord, are a shield about me,
My glory, and the One who lifts my head.
I was crying to the Lord with my voice,
And He answered me from His holy mountain.
I lay down and slept;
I awoke, for the Lord sustains me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people
Who have set themselves against me round about.
Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God!
For You have smitten all my enemies on the cheek;
You have shattered the teeth of the wicked.

One of the significant balancing acts in relationships is “influence but don’t control.” Every person has a desire to control others and a strong desire not to be controlled by others. It is a subtle desire that rarely comes into our conscious thinking but is always there, influencing us as we relate to others.

I am reading a book right now on relationships. The book references a study that was done on hundreds of couples who had gotten a divorce. Most divorces happen because of the inability to resolve conflict, and most conflicts are driven by a desire to control.

The New Testament, especially the teaching of Jesus, repeatedly says to be a servant. Being a servant doesn’t mean we do all the nasty jobs; it means we relinquish all control.

Mark 10:42-44 Jesus said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. But it is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all.

Jesus says that if we humble ourselves, He will exalt us; if we make ourselves last, He will make us first.

This is a very important area of self-reflection whenever we have any kind of conflict with another person. “Why did this conflict happen?” “What did I do wrong?” What could I have done better at?” A person that Jesus blesses and uses for His purposes and glory is a servant; that is, he seeks to influence but not to control, and he doesn’t mind not winning an argument.

Today, I went fishing on the Colombia River for chinook salmon with three other staff from JBC. We all caught a salmon, which is the limit now, and they were all nice fish. We had a great time, and I enjoyed eating fresh salmon tonight. We went with a guide, and the cool thing about going with a guide is that they know what they are doing. They fish for a living, or more accurately, take others fishing and help them catch fish. If they didn’t catch fish, they would soon be out of business and working a regular job like most others. So, they have learned the skill of catching fish well, and they have learned the skill of helping others catch fish. We had a good guide today. I have gone with him many times in the last 20 years and always catch fish with him.

That is what I have done most of my life. I have been a fisher of men, as Jesus put it. I have been working at influencing people to trust Jesus as their savior and teaching and encouraging others to do the same. My life activity is based on my belief that heaven and hell are very real places where very real people will live for eternity. People are transferred from the domain of darkness into the Kingdom of Jesus because they have heard and accepted the gospel’s truth. That happens because someone influenced them, a fisher of people. Good fishermen know how to catch fish; they know the secrets and the basics of fishing; they are skilled and can teach that skill to others. Good fishers of people have learned to communicate the truth in a way that others can understand and draw them to Christ. They have also learned how to help other followers of Christ to do the same.

Most Christians do very little fishing for people. There are a lot of reasons why, but the fact remains that most Christians do little to attract people to eternal life with Jesus in heaven.

Things break or quit working at the worst times. I jumped in my pickup to go to a meeting, and it wouldn’t start because the battery was dead. I jumped it with another car and got where I needed to go. After that, it happened half a dozen times, so I got a new battery. I thought that would solve my problem, but it happened again this morning, so now I have to figure out if it is my alternator, starter, or a demon in my pickup. I have a favorite mechanic, and it is his job to figure out and fix the problem.

Our bodies are like cars; things break down and quit working. I went to the dentist this last week because two of my teeth were broken and needed fixing. I am going back tomorrow to finish the job. I had a bit of a problem with the temporary crown they put on. It was too tall, and the two incisor teeth I bite fishing line in two with wouldn’t quite touch. That is a significant problem! Now I will have to use a pocket knife like everybody else! My fix job on my teeth is minor compared to many others I hear about. People get new valves in their hearts; sometimes, they get a new heart. We all have doctors we hope can figure out and fix our problems.

Jesus talked about people who had bad hearts that needed fixing. Obviously He was talking about our spiritual heart, not our blood pump. He can fix our hearts, but He expects that we will figure out what is wrong. Self-examination is an essential part of our spiritual growth. The problem is that many people are blind to their own character flaws and sin problems. There are several reasons and causes of spiritual blindness, but probably the worst is our critical spirit and judgmental attitude toward others. The fundamental law is that the more we judge others, the more blind we become to our own faults, and we then develop major blind spots.

This last week, I worked on two different projects. One was putting chairs back into our sanctuary. We took them out about a month ago to put in a new carpet. They are very nice-looking theater-type seats and are very comfortable as well. The reinstalling process was difficult and time-consuming. The reason is that they bolt to the floor and each other, and getting all those bolts and bolt holes to line up is challenging, to say the least. One of the factors is that it is our sanctuary, and we want it to look nice and the chairs to work right, so a shoddy job to get it done quickly is unacceptable.

A second project is building a chicken coop for my wife’s chickens. She loves her chickens, so I want it to be nice, but it is still a chicken coop. It is a unique chicken coop with wheels on it so we can move it around the yard so the chickens will mow my yard, fertilize the grass, and get fresh grass to eat for themselves, saving on chicken food. I expect many people will want to look at my chicken coop, so I want it to look professional, but it is still a chicken coop.

In God’s eyes, I am not a chicken coop. In God’s eyes, you are not a chicken coop, so how I treat and talk to you matters greatly to God. To honor someone is to treat them as God’s prized possessions, whom he is working on to look like and act like Jesus.

I wrote this blog several years ago, but in light of yesterday’s blog, I thought it would be a good one to repeat.

As I grew up and older, I have had many embarrassing experiences. I tell those stories now, and they usually bring a laugh to those listening.
One of them was when I walked into a women’s restroom because I wasn’t paying attention, went into a toilet stall, locked the door, and then heard the sound of high heels clicking on the hard tile floor as a bunch of ladies entered all at once. I wasn’t sure what to do as ladies pulled on the handle of my locked door, looking for an empty stall. I realized that if they looked under the partition, they would see my cowboy boots, and I would be discovered. I could imagine a lady yelling, “Pervert! Pervert!” at the top of her lungs. So I got up on the toilet lid and squatted down, hiding until they had all left, and I managed to sneak out without being discovered. Whoooeeee that was close. As I squatted there on that toilet, I thought of these prayers from Psalms.

Psalms 31:17 Let me not be put to shame, O Lord, for I call upon You;
Psalms 25:2 O my God, in You I trust,
Do not let me be ashamed;
Psalms 71:1 In You, O Lord, I have taken refuge;
Let me never be ashamed.

The human psyche is difficult to understand regarding motives, fears, and the need for personal worth or glory. Many verses in the Bible talk about shame and our fear of it. It appears that shame is the first emotion that Adam and Eve felt after their sin, and we have all felt it ever since. We will do just about anything to escape or prevent the experience of shame in our lives.
Many self-protective methods people have used to guard against shame are wrong and unwise and will often compound shame if discovered. Some of those methods are lying, blaming others, boasting, hiding, anti-social behavior, and running away, literally and figuratively.
One of the consequences of sin in our lives is shame, and freedom from shame is a reward that we receive from God when we seek Him and stay close to Him. God’s protection from shame is an often repeated prayer in the Bible, suggesting that He can prevent shame or cause and allow shame to come into our lives.
A significant blessing God gives us as a reward for right living is that He fills us with glory or self-worth. Very few people have discovered or realized that God gives and takes away a sense of significance as a motive to seek Him, to live for Him, and to obey Him. He does that with experiences that He either brings into our lives or prevents from happening.
It is enlightening to collect all the verses in the Bible on shame and read them all together. Over a dozen prayers to God asking Him to deliver from or protect from shame and embarrassment.
Many of our fears in life aren’t primarily fears of physical pain but fears of psychological pain caused by shame. I think that is why most Christians do very little witnessing for Christ; we fear we will somehow be embarrassed.
The more time we spend with God in the Word and prayer, the more courage we will have, and we will not be intimidated by possible embarrassing experiences

Some things that we pray about to God will not get answered. It is an interesting Bible study to discover what those are. I certainly wouldn’t pray for those things. But there are also other things that God loves to answer. Again, those things are in the Bible. I read through the Psalms every month, five chapters each day, and I have highlighted most of the Psalms with different colors depending on the topic. For anything that is about prayer or a prayer, I highlight it in blue. One of the requests made to God repeatedly in the Psalms is that God will protect us from shame.

Psalms 25:1-2 To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in You I trust,
Do not let me be ashamed,

One of the devil’s main goals, as he tempts and interferes in our lives, is to cause us to feel shame. We dread experiences and circumstances that will cause us to feel shame. People often say things to others to try to cause them to feel shame; kids are frequently guilty of this.

The word kindness in the Bible is usually about how we talk to others. One of my memory verse is Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Talking with kindness builds others up and never causes any degree of shame.

As I pray for my kids and grandkids, I pray that God will protect them from shame, that they will feel a great sense of God’s love for them, and that they will fully understand their worth and value to Him.