I was seventeen when I went to a Thanksgiving vacation Youth retreat That our Youth group went on. It was on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving in 1965. We drove from Trout Lake, Washington, to Yakima, Washington, and listened to a retired missionary speak to us five times in two days. All five sermons were about the importance of reading the Bible. One of his sermons was on the importance of volume in reading. He said when you read a lot of the Bible from all over the Bible that, you become Bible-minded; that is, you understand the doctrines in the Bible, the history of God’s working in the world, the trends and shifts in God’s working with people, how things fit together in God’s plan for the ages, and the overriding goals of God for His people. ‘He said you can read the Bible through in a year by reading ten minutes a day, and he said that reading thirty minutes a day will increase the benefit of reading God’s Word ten times. I don’t know where he got his information, but I believed his statement was true. He gave a suggested Bible reading plan of reading two chapters in the Old Testament, five chapters in Psalms, one chapter in Proverbs, two chapters in the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation, and two chapters in the Epistles for a total of twelve chapters each day. I started that Bible reading plan in 1965, 58 years ago, and have continued it ever since. If you do the math, that is about 250,000 chapters of Bible reading over the last 58 years. I have read the Old Testament 58 times, the book of Psalms 720 times, Proverbs 720 times, the Gospels, Acts, and Revelations 240 times, and the Epistles, Romans through Jude 500 times each.

I don’t know if any other high school kids at that retreat were as impacted by the speaker as I was, but he certainly made a difference in my life. I don’t know the exact difference the Bible reading habit I picked up from him made in my life, ministry, or preaching and teaching ministry over the last 60 years, but I would guess that it is substantial. I think that many of the rewards from Jesus at the “Judgment Seat of Christ” that would come to me will go to this retired missionary. I don’t remember his name, but he was a great tool for God in my life.

I have said it many times before, but who I am today and what I have accomplished with my life is primarily the result of a lot of faithful people who spoke into my life, who motivated me, shaped me, and taught me. I hope that I am passing that on to others in my life.

The hardest thing I do is memorize Bible verses. I work on my memory verses for 45 minutes every night before bed. In the morning, my mind is much stronger, and I memorize faster, but if I do my memorizing at night, I think about the verses all night long, and they seem to be much more permanently impressed on my mind. I can talk myself out of memorizing easily because it takes so much mental energy and effort. Sometimes, my head will ache after 45 minutes of intense memorizing, not in a “headache” sort of way, but in a fatigued kind of way.

I persevere in memorizing Bible verses because I believe that the Bible is the Word of God, the Mind of Christ and that the Bible is living and supernatural. I believe that memorizing God’s Word changes me from the inside out. I know that it helps me a great deal to control my thinking.

Memorizing Scripture takes great self-control, and I grow in self-control as I continue to make memorizing the Bible a high priority in my life.

When they get to be my age, 75, many people will struggle with memory or thinking issues. Spending 45 minutes every day memorizing Bible verses is the best exercise we can do for our brain to keep it strong.

Pride is subtle; it is hard to see it in our own life. Those close to us often see it as a growing problem before we do, but one problem with those with pride is that they resist any correction in their life. It doesn’t take much pride in us before we become totally unusable by God. Pride damages all of our relationships. Certain sins and character flaws become an open door for demons to become attached to us, and then the pride problem accelerates with their temptations to become even more prideful.

God will attempt to correct us and show us our pride problem by bringing us into humbling circumstances as He did with Nebachanesser. Sometimes we get it, but sometimes we don’t.

I fear becoming prideful and messing up the ministry God has given me, so I pray daily for God to do whatever He needs to do to keep me humble. I think about my reactions to people and situations, looking seriously for pride in my life. I pray daily, asking God to “not let pride step on my neck.”

Demons are very real; we just can’t see them, so we forget about them. They are constantly working at making our lives miserable, trying to get us to sin, working at making us proud, self-centered, and unloving. They talk to us, and we hear them in our thoughts. As we work at controlling our bitter, angry, jealous, immoral, covetous, and selfish thoughts, we need to remember what the source of most of those thoughts is and ask God for help. There are many prayers in the Psalms asking for protection against our enemies; those are spiritual warfare Psalms; they are also prayers Jesus prayed in His battle against satan and his demons. It would be a good idea to memorize a number of them. Here is one of the passages that I have memorized and meditate on often.

Psalms 3:1-7 O Lord, how my adversaries have increased! But You, O Lord, are a shield about me. 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 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.

Church is a team sport. I love you; you love me. I pray for you; you pray for me. I serve you; you serve me. I encourage you; you encourage me. I forgive you; you forgive me. And on the list goes. There is an amazing joy in being part of a loving community that looks out for each other. I have observed that those who are critical of the church are selfish, self-centered people who want their needs met but don’t think much about others around them.” It is all about me” is their motto.
Work hard to become part of a group that follows this principle.
Philippians 2:3-4 “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”
It may be a church or a small group in a church, a prayer group, a men’s group, or whatever, but find such a community and don’t mess it up by being self-centered. Life is so good when it is part of a loving family of believers. Don’t rest until you find one. For me, Jefferson Baptist Church is the “I love you” church, that brings great joy into my life.

James 5:16 says, “Pray for one another.”Ephesians 6:18 says, “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.”
A basic principle in the New Testament called “Body life,” is that what we do for others is much more effective than what we do for ourselves, including prayer. God made it that way to make us interdependent. We need each other. All that He has done, He has done to make the church more unified, needing each other, pulling us together. I pray for you, and you pray for me, which works well, but me praying for my own needs and you praying for your own needs doesn’t work well at all. A corollary principle is that the more I pray for others, the more others will pray for me, God sees to it.

This week is our “Five Days of Prayer,” where we pray from 5:00 to 10:00 am and 5:00 to 10:00 pm, Monday through Friday. We are praying for our Missionaries and their ministries around the world. When we pray as a church God works in and through the Missionaries, and He will see to it that our church gets prayed for and that each person participating in the “Five Days of Prayer” gets prayed for.

Such is the wisdom of God.

Almost all our kids and grandkids have been staying together with us at a lodge we rented on the coast for three days. It is a beautiful place that easily holds all of us and is just a few minutes walk from the beach. And a significant bonus is that we have had fantastic weather for the last two days. The place has a pool table, a ping pong table, lots of puzzles, cards, and a bunch of table games. We have played hearts, Yahtzee, pool, and ping pong tonight. The kids are playing Uno and building forts with the cushions on the couches.

The grandkids, all cousins or siblings, have been well-parented, have excellent manners, and get along incredibly well. Many of them don’t see each other except a couple of times a year and are 16 years old, down to six, so this kind of unity and love is amazing.

In 1969, when Patty and I got married, we had no idea what the future held for us. We just lived life and tried hard to follow the Lord’s will and lead in our lives.

Now, we are both 75 years old, and heaven is the main thing in our future. We do not know what that will look, feel, or sound like, but it will be wonderful. We are going there because we have trusted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and are following Him and loving Him with all of our hearts, souls, and might.

We pray for all of our kids, their spouses, and grandkids at least weekly, that God will protect them from evil, that He will lead them into His perfect will for their lives, and that we will live with them all in heaven forever. Life is short; heaven is forever.

My favorite team, the San Francisco 49ers, lost the Super Bowl today; I was disappointed, but not like I lost a big fish I was fighting or anything like that. In most competitions I am in, I have some part to play to determine the winner, but in the Super Bowl, I had zero influence on the outcome. I was simply a spectator watching the game on TV, hoping my team would win. It is over now, and I can move on to basketball, both College and NBA. I have favorites in both areas, but it doesn’t take much for me to switch loyalties, so I don’t need counseling when my favorite team loses. I used to be involved in playing basketball and softball, shooting my bow competitively, playing baseball in College, running in a lot of long-distance races, and competing in golf, though I never won. The most competitive events I am involved in now are playing poker and pinochle and catching the biggest or most fish.

The competitive nature I have had most of my life is now with myself in accomplishing my goals. I have several adversaries that I compete against; one is my flesh; it is what I live in. My flesh is lazy, hates to change, and despises doing anything hard or sacrificing. My flesh is totally against any and all of my goals, and it puts up quite a battle with my will to accomplish them.

”My second adversary is the devil who wants me to be lukewarm in my service to Christ as Lord of my life, and he wants me to sin a lot, to be selfish, prideful, angry, undisciplined, and grumpy. He has assigned demons to follow me around and tempt me 24/7.

I am determined to win the battle between me and my flesh and between me and the devil. My goals are my tools for winning; when I accomplish my goals, I win; when I don’t, I lose, and I want to win.

I sat in a chair watching young kids trying to climb a “climbing wall” today for several hours at JBC’s annual “Sportsman’s Show.” There were a lot of kids who harnessed up and made the try. It is a 30-foot high wall with little hand and foot holds. The climbers have a harness attached to a safety rope someone else holds. Most will slip and fall before they reach the top and call it quits when they do, but a couple of boys about 14 years old kept climbing after each fall. One must have attempted it ten times, each time getting slightly higher. I was so impressed with his tenacity and endurance. It takes a lot out of you to climb it once, but ten times must have been exhausting. It was encouraging for me to see young boys with that kind of endurance and fierce determination to succeed. I thought to myself, they will amount to something in life. I also thought to myself that kind of determination is rare. I was doubly encouraged because those boys were my grandsons.

The admonition in Hebrews 12 is to run the race of life with endurance. Life is hard, and those who run without quitting and endure will win.

In 2015, I went to the Portland Sportsman’s Show, which is a funny statement because I have attended it every year since I was 15 years old, except for a couple of years ago when it got canceled because of COVID. There are hundreds of guides there, both hunting and fishing, with booths advertising their business. There was a booth advertising long-range fishing out of San Diego. The trips were anywhere from three days to twelve days long, and they had hours of videos playing in the booth of the fishing on these trips. The whole concept fascinated me, and I stood there and watched their videos for hours. Everybody with whom I had come to the Show was ready to head home, and I was still watching more videos. That night, I added a new goal to my list, “Go fishing on a ten-day fishing trip out of San Diego before the end of 2025.” It was a long-range fishing trip for ten days, so I thought I would make a long-range goal to be completed before ten years. A pastor friend read my goals recently, saw that one, and commented that he knew a guy who made that trip every other year. He gave me his phone number. I texted him, and we decided to have a cup of coffee and talk about fishing. He connected me with the Captain of the boat, and I am now signed up and scheduled to go fishing for tuna for ten days in 2025.

I have made a lot of long-range goals over the years. I try not to have more than six at any one time so I don’t lose motivation on any one of the goals. I have read this goal and others daily for years, but I was never sure how to take the first step. Actually, I knew how to take the first step, but there were so many things I didn’t know that I was intimidated to take the first step. Making this new friend who had done it eight times before, who knew exactly what to do, and said that I could tag along with him gave me the confidence to take the jump. So, I signed up on the dotted line and sent in my $500 registration fee; it is now official.

There is a lot of power in writing out our dreams for years in the future and reading them every day. Because of that constant reminder, we regularly do little things that gradually open doors for our dreams to happen.