My Mom came down for a few days to see us all and attend the Christmas drama at JBC. Having Mom around always prompts my brain to reminisce about growing up, how I was raised, how we raised our kids as a result and how our kids are raising theirs. I have been doing some fresh writing on the topic of how to raise champions because I am scheduled to do a seminar on parenting in Nevada next month. Probably the main thing my Mom taught me, and Patty and I had as a main goal raising our kids, and the more I counsel people I am even more convinced now that it is super important. That is to raise our kids to be able to stand alone. I am not talking about being indifferent or being a standoffish person. I am talking about being a person who does not get their self worth from other people. So many are obsessed with pleasing or impressing others, worried about what their opinion is of us. It makes us easily offended and hurt by the words and treatment of others, we don’t live with values and convictions that we own, but those of the people around us and they change all the time. We are easily intimidated and bullied. We can’t really serve others well and with right motives until we are free of being controlled by their opinion of us and how they treat us. So many parents today get upset if their kids aren’t treated well by others. It is better to take advantage of those events to teach them to rise above what others do and say. When I was in grade school a kid named Fred would steal my lunch and eat it. I told my Mom and the next morning she had two lunches made for me and told me to give one to Fred on the bus ride to school. Seemed stupid to me but I did it and repeated the action regularly and Fred became a good friend and because he was such a big kid a great protector from other bullies in school. The basic lesson learned from my Mom was don’t react to others bad behavior, but do what is right for God’s approval and you will get worth and value straight from Him. Jesus said to do good to those who mistreat you. Not very many people live by that principle today.

I have a 300 gallon plastic IBC tank buried in the ground in my green house with 282 Tillapia in it in various sizes. Tilapia will die if the water gets below 60 degrees for very long and below 70 degrees they don’t eat much or grow. So I have a hot water heater element in the side of the tank with an electronic temperature controller hooked up to it to keep the temperature right at 75 degrees. I went out to feed my fish this morning and the water temperature digital display screen said 85 degrees. What!! How can that be? I stuck my little handie dandie thermometer into the water and it was down to 62 degrees, oooooooo that is not good!! the temperature controller had obviously malfunctioned. I quickly wired the heating element direct so it was on continuously while I tried to fix the problem. I played around with it for an hour trying to get it to work, but it seemed like it was toast. I had another one in my aquaponics box of stuff for a back up, but when I got it out of the box to hook it up the instructions were all in Chinese. It was a different brand then the one I had been using, but I thought I could get it wired up without the instructions. Got it all done and flipped the breaker on and I fried my controller! Oops, that wasn’t very smart!! Meanwhile I kept checking the water temperature and turning the electricity off and on to my heating element to keep the water close. Then I did what any smart person does, I typed in “how to fix a Racon electronic temperature controller”, on Utube on my IPad. I watched several videos that sounded like my problem and I gave it a shot. Got done, hooked it up and success, it works. I now have a new skill.

I don’t know about you, but I regularly have thoughts like, “that’s not fair”, or simply, ” you gotta be kidding me”, or ” give me a break”. So many things in life are not right, not fair, not just, and thinking about them can make you very angry, frustrated and ultimately bitter. We live in an age where because of communication tools we can read a lot of other people’s frustration about various situations and conditions of life. Reading and hearing about the problems of so many leads to a definite pessimistic attitude about life in general. I have an anchor that I pull on periodically to make sure I haven’t drifted to far. That anchor is my believe that Jesus is coming soon and when He does He will straighten everthing out. God is totally just and there will come a day when Jesus will rule on the earth and those who have been faithful in serving Him will rule with Him. I meditate often on the end. I really believe that Jesus is ultimately just and fair. It will all work out in the end, at the end of the world as we presently know it.

If you read yesterday’s Blog you know that my phone is toast. All day today I was reminded that I am presently in a state of high addiction to my smart phone. It was almost like I had lost my ability to see or hear or walk. It seemed like I was just part of a person, that part of me had been amputated. It is fairly embarrassing to even write such an admission for you all to read. I try and live my life as a strong person, but as I suffered major withdrawals today I felt rather wimpy and weak. I have been telling myself all day, “it’s OK, it is just a great tool for helping to stay organized, get a lot done, and communicate to people”. Sort of like having your car break down in the middle of a long trip to Texas. It would be a real bummer to have walk that far. OK, I am addicted to food as well, and I fast for a day or even up to a week periodically to show myself who is boss. I think maybe I should periodically fast from using my smart phone to prove to myself that I can function successfully without it, and do so without crying!!

Busy is a term that can mean stupid, or more graciously put, not wise. A highly productive person tends to choose to do things that are worthwhile doing and also that they are capable of doing so they have some success at it and are not wasting their time spinning their wheels in an unfamiliar area. I sometimes choose to do things because I have never done them before and I want a new experience or I want to learn to do something that is new for me. But sometimes I choose to do something that is stupid because it ends up with a lot of wasted time and often wasted money. My goal is to learn from these less than wise choices so I don’t repeat them, and I will become increasingly a highly productive person. I dropped my new Apple IPhone 6plus and shattered the glass on the front. I have been trying to read through the spider web of cracks which is very annoying. I ordered a new glass for my phone online and today I decided to put it in. I watched the Utube instruction video 4 or 5 times and was pretty sure I was an expert on the process. I don’t tremor much because of my Parkinson’s except when I try not to tremor then I get to shaking pretty good. There were 14 little, bitty, teeny, microscopic screws that needed taken out and put back in during this process and it was pretty much a disaster. It took my a full three hours to do this little job, and when I was done I knew I was in trouble when I had 2 screws left over. I turned the phone on and the screen made some weird flashing, but did not work, not even a little bit. So now I don’t have a phone, but I did learn something though, I will never do that again!!

I am always pretty tuckered out on Sunday afternoon after all the pastoring stuff is done, and today I was totally wrung out after preaching the two services, so Sunday afternoon is usually pretty lazy. Today after I got home from church I watched 2 football games, kinda, sorta, as I slept through most of them. I was awake enough to eat two big helpings of lasagne and a bowl of ice cream. I am now propped up in my bed writing this, and when I finish I will do some paroosing on Facebook, read some articles on “Bleacher Report”, and check out all the football and basketball scores. At 8:30 I am heading into Regal Cinema in Salem to see the movie “Creed” with my boys Sam and Seth. Amidst all that lazy stuff I did pedal my stationary bike for an hour, read 12 chapters in my Bible, and put a bunch of new pictures into my ” Prayer Journal” that is in my IPad. When I get home from the movie I will get in at least one hour of prayer before going to sleep for the night. When I close my eyes tonight it will be with a great deal of contentment that it has been a good day.

Tonight I preached on, and tomorrow morning I will again, on the power of intercessory prayer, that is praying for others. One of the things I said was that I have much more power and authority with God in my prayers for others than I do when I pray for myself. God made it that way so we would be interdependent, that is I need you to pray for me and you need me to pray for you. Self-centeredness doesn’t work in prayer. If I would pray a lot for other people God would prompt and motivate them to pray for me. If I would pray for the character flaws that I see in people instead of being critical about them God would work in their life and fix them. I have great power to influence people when I pray for them. If someone treats me badly, even cheats me instead of being angry or bitter I can choose to pray for them that God bless them and change them and He would. Not instantly, but over time as I chose to persevere seeking God’s blessing on them instead of being bitter. The greatest result would be in me as I would be free of bitterness and anger and be instead full of joy, peace, and strength. It is almost humerous to read about the efforts of politicians to fix the problems of society. Only God can, but only when we pray diligently. I will do that.

One of the keys to growing as a person is to learn as a person. How we think predominately controls how we act and the choices we make. As we learn we know more and we think clearer and we can solve problems better and quicker. Obviously this is assuming that we are learning good stuff, true, nobel, and Godly. For me the most rapid learning takes place when I read good books. Because I came to this conclusion years ago I read as a basic discipline of life because I want to learn and I want to grow. I throw away a lot of books that I buy because when I finish the first chapter I can tell if it is a book I will learn from and will challenge me and will hold my attention. There are so many good books there isn’t much sense reading one that is average. Some books are so good that they are worth reading annually at least for awhile. My goal is to read 100 pages each week at 20 pages a day. Lots of people that I have heard about read way more than that but that amount seems to work for me along with other disciplines including my Bible reading and prayer time. I extend my reading time by writing down key principles, paradigms, and axioms as I pick them up as I read. I go back and reread my wisdom collection several times each month to get them ingrained in my head. Wisdom is more than knowledge, but without knowledge wisdom is impossible. The book of Proverbs in the Bible says to seek wisdom like gold or silver or precious treasure if you want to find it. I intend to do that.

With the Paris shootings and now with what happened in San Bernardino I was reminded of a Bible passage in the book of Revelations, 6:4; “A red horse went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another”. A lot of people don’t believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God like I do so this passage and others like it have been ridiculed. There will come a day when everyone will know that the Bible is true. The Bible has the answers for eternal life with God and Jesus Christ. The Bible also has the principles for living from God that results in joy, and peace, and strength and success in relationships and victory. Most of these principles are also laughed at and declared irrelevant for our day. As the world becomes more and more anxious because of things becoming increasingly out of control, perhaps many will turn to Jesus and the answers and hope He gives in the Bible. That is my prayer.

Monday one of the grandkids came in the house after playing outside and he smelled pretty awful. I thought to myself, he is a little old to be messing his pants. I asked Patty if she smelled anything and he responded that it was smelly like that in the backyard. I went out and checked and there was poop and toilet paper all over. He evidently had walked through it and had it on his shoes. I did some investigating and found that The line going into the sewer had plugged and “stuff” was coming out around the inlet on the septic tank. I scooped up everything on the ground into several 5 gallon buckets and dug the dirt out away from the pipe going into the tank which took me a couple of hours. The inlet was old cement and had busted off. I called the septic tank people and they said they could make it out today so no toilet flushing for the last 24 hours. They weren’t to full by the time everything was working again. Kind of reminded me of porta potties. I plan out every day each morning so that I can make the best use of my time, but then there are days like this that sort of “mess” up the schedule. It is good when these “poop days” happen to not get upset or uptight and enjoy the humor and the variety in the normal schedule. I try to train myself to have right thinking and attitudes on little trials like this so when a big one comes along I handle it the same way. Growing is all about “training consistently” not about “trying harder”. I think I will take a shower now that everything is working good before I go to the church for prayer. I smell kind of bad.