Ten years ago when I was 65 years old I started taking three months off of regular ministry each year. I call it a summer study break even though I do a lot more than study. Last year I came home with 33 sermons outlined and except for adding illustrations and stories they were ready to preach. I am preaching them on Wednesday night services and at our daughter church in Albany, Agape Family Fellowship now. This year I will be on a bicycle trip going down the Pacific coast from Canada to Mexico for one month, then I will be in Alaska fishing for a month, then home for a week, and then back to Alaska hunting caribou with my son-in-law who lives in Fairbanks. Only a couple more months now before I am off on my adventures, and I am getting excited.

These three month breaks have been the key thing in my continuing to pastor with passion and energy. They are not only super times of reading and writing and composing sermons and lessons to teach, but they are very good times of being with the Lord and focusing on Him and my relationship with Him, as well as getting renewed in my vision and calling in life.

I am convinced that these times of being away, and decompressing, resulted in my being a better pastor, leader, husband, father, grandfather, and friend. It is such a blessed time that I call it heaven on earth.

Ephesians 4:31
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

I made a commitment to Patty a number of year’s ago that I would not get angry at her, not even a little bit irritated no matter what she did, no matter how many times she did it. My commitment was part of my “I love you” commitments, so every time I said “I love you” I was remaking my promise to her. Over the years I have been able to overcome the anger problem I had so that now I don’t get angry at Patty not even a little bit irritated no matter what she does, no matter how many times she does it.

So, I have succeeded with Patty, but there are times that I get angry at people. It isn’t a good thing to do, it doesn’t change anything about the situation we are in, and it is a very bad testimony for Christ. When I say I get angry, it isn’t loud, yelling kind of anger, but it is intense and emotional and influences the words I speak to people.

I pray a prayer of commitment every morning and I will include in it, “I will not get angry at anybody, not even a little bit irritated no matter what they do, no matter how many times they have done it. Lord, I can’t keep this commitment unless you specifically give me the power to keep it. please do that, I declare to you my total dependence on You to give me the strength to become a very patient person in character in all my relationships.

I understand the need at times for what is called “righteous anger” when dealing with sin or injustice in situations, but I also know the difference between what I am talking about conquering which is a part of my “flesh” and godly anger. I have a strong desire to be a godly man who pleases the Lord with all my actions, words, and thoughts.

The worst experience for me in all of life is to do something that I teach against. I feel like a total wimp and a hypocrite when I do. The last couple of days I have let myself get into a downward cycle of self-pity, and depression and have made little attempt to pull myself out of it, just sort of soak and sour.

I teach that we are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we do that by meditating on scripture verses that apply to what we are dealing with. I know that, I teach that, so why am I letting myself do this negative thinking stuff. It is probably a result of a number of things, but I am on the mend now.

Being in the dumps is a miserable place to be especially when you know it is self-inflicted, that makes it even worse. But the cool thing about being a Christian is that confession and repentance really does work. My self-talk goes like this, “OK, do you want to stay here the rest of your life? NO! How about a year? NO! How about a week? NO! How about a day? NO! I am sorry Lord, You are wonderful to me, life is amazing, I am of all people most blessed, Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Heaven is a wonderful place! Thank You for giving me that wonderful gift! I am sorry for thinking like a fool, thank You for forgiving me! “

The next thing I do is journal in detail to embed the principle of right thinking into my head and heart. The good thing that comes out of these occasional bouts of stupid thinking is that I can teach what I teach about positive thinking with increased passion, this is no hypothetical lesson, it is very real.

Last night I was weary in my soul. I spoke, taught, preached for four hours, first at 8:00 am to the woman’s leadership class, then I drove to Tangent and preached the sermon in the Sunday morning service at Agape Family Fellowship, then I drove back to Jefferson and taught my Men’s Leadership class at 1:00 pm and then my leadership II class at 3:00 pm, and then I drove back to Agape to have a meeting with key leaders and Elders. Then I drove home and arrived in time for dinner at 8:00 pm. Yesterday I had numerous hard conversations with different people about their life. At the conclusion of the day last night I was weary in my soul.

Today I went crabbing with a friend. I went crabbing about 15 years ago but I don’t remember much of what happened then. Today we put his boat in the water at the Siletz River Bay and put out 6 Crabb Potts with chicken parts inside each trap. We spread them out in the bay and after waiting for 45 minutes we pulled each one up, took out the male Crabb’s that were legal limit in size, and threw the rest back in the water. We would then drop the Crabb pot back into the water and go to the next one and check it. It was a nice day on the water with a light breeze blowing, and occasionally it would rain a bit.

I woke up this morning with the same weary soul that I went to bed with, but I noticed that as we were busy trying to capture crabs the weariness went away and was replaced with joy and a very real feeling of contentment in life and a very healthy soul. It is amazing to me how therapeutic God’s creation is and how effective it is in making me understand how wonderful life really is.

1 Peter 5:8-9
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith.

Ephesians 6:11-12
Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

The more we do for God the more agitated the devil will become and the more he will attempt to mess up our life. The main thing he does with me is talk to me, and I hear him in my thoughts. His goal is to get me to believe lies so I will act on those instead of truth. He increases the volume, that is the number of times he or his demons speak to me, the number of thoughts that pop into my thinking, and I suppose the loudness as well. I would guess that he accomplishes that by increasing the number of demons assigned to me.

I resist the domain of darkness by choosing to rejoice always, setting my mind on verses I have memorized and thinking about them a lot. Sunday nights are almost always nights of great struggle to take my thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, and to not let my thoughts drag me into self-pity, irritation, bitterness, weariness, and a host of other thinking patterns designed by the devil to steal my joy.

Sometimes I get weary with the unending onslaught of negative thoughts that I need to conquer. The Bible promises that there comes a point that if I am faithful to keep resisting that he , the devil, will flee from me for awhile.

Revelation 3:1 you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die;

People say that you are something special, but from God’s perspective you are dead, and God’s command to you is simply, “wake up.” To be a different person than people see is to be different in that part of our life that people can’t see, our heart, our soul. To be different on the inside than what we are on the outside.

Matthew 23:27-28 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

To be a person like the Pharisees is a place of no growth, little accomplishment, low self-worth, defensiveness, and extra sensitivity to slights and hurts. When you keep pretending you get to the point where you have blind spots, and character flaws that you don’t see, but most other people do. The key to overcoming this natural tendency of all people to project an image of what we want people to believe that we are when we aren’t is to faithfully read, memorize, and meditate on the Bible.

Hebrews 4:12-13
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.

There are different words used over the history of Christianity to describe a supernatural work of God in the hearts, minds, and lives of people. The often used word is revival, which basically means to come back to life. In historical revivals thousands of people came to faith in Christ in a short amount of time. Those great revivals in the past usually had an individual who was the main preacher/evangelist. Another term is “Awakening,” and another is “Renewal,” which would be a time of lukewarm, backslidden, nominal Christians getting on fire for God with repentance of sin being a major part of what happens followed by heart felt worship and commitment to seek the Lord and serve Him. Most people use the terms interchangeably which is fine because usually all the elements of revival, awakening, and renewal are there which are anointed preaching of the Word, repentance of sin and apathetic living in a worldly way, reconciliation between people who have been bitter towards each other, spontaneous worship, and commitments to seek God through Bible reading, prayer, scripture memory, and gathering with other believers. The most distinctive element written about in all revivals, awakenings, and renewals has been the very powerful sense of God’s presence which is what initiates the event in the first place. The Revival/renewal happening right now at Asbury University is on the news, Facebook, talk shows, and every social media outlet there is. I have been reading everything I can find on the event, watching video clips put on social media by those attending the event. There are people from every State and many countries of the world showing up.

It is of great interest to me because I have read most books written on past revivals and awakenings, I have been praying for revival in our country for a number of years, and when JBC has its prayer events revival gets prayed for often. At our last “Five Days of Prayer” event I was sure that revival was going to break out in Jefferson soon. Revival starts with the powerful presence of God being manifest and it ends when that presence leaves.

Historically revivals end when to many people try to lead or control what is happening, when to many people start showboating and pretending to be impacted by God’ presence, and the effects start happening purely from the emotion generated by genuinely changed lives.

The genuineness of a revival according to Leonard Ravenhill who studied revivals probably more than anyone else is that it is spontaneous. The revival happening in Ausbury seems to be that from everything I have read and heard.

I am thinking seriously about driving back to Kentucky and seeing if I can experience some of what is happening. I am going to wait until Tuesday to see how hot the fire is still burning. In the meantime, I am going to see if I can find some others who would like to go, and a car that gets good gas mileage. My grandson and some friends are there now and will probably be back by Tuesday so I can get a report from them on what is happening.

It was cold weather today on the river, but hot fishing. My fishing buddy and I had 7 on, netted 5, and brought 3 home. We are eating one of them tonight. I was going to try and write some amazing wisdom and insight to go with this picture, but I am so tuckered out that my brain won’t work very well, but I will leave you with this small bit of profundity.

On January 26th we went fishing on the same river as today, in the same place on the river, in the same boat, with same guide, with the same river height and we only took home one fish, but today we netted five and released only two of those, what was the difference? Only God knows and I don’t think He is going to tell me. But even though we did poorly last time, we persevered and didn’t give up, we went fishing again and this time we did good. You never know how things are going to turn out, you just keep at it.

Galatians 6:9
Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.

Leadership is very important in any multi-person group so that the group can have unity and accomplish it’s goals, and be successful as a group. Leadership is especially important in the life of a church because unity and love are the main causes of God’s blessing to a church. At JBC we have the main leader with several other leaders working closely with him. But we also have many other leaders because we have so many ministries and every ministry is led by a leader.

So we are always looking for qualified leaders because the more we have the more we can do, the more lives we can touch and repair. What makes a qualified leader? We look at three things, first thing is character, then chemistry, that is their people skills, their ability to get along with people, and last their competence in the skill of leadership. If those three get reversed there will be problems. Here are a few character qualities that the Bible mentions.

A good leader has the character trait of gentleness. In Matthew 11 Jesus describes Himself and mentions only two character traits, gentleness and humility. In 2nd Timothy 2:25 as Paul mentors Timothy on how to be a good pastor he tells him to deal with difficult people with gentleness and the result will be that they repent and change. Gentleness is being aware that people have feelings, that they desire to be treated with dignity and respect. A good leader thinks of people before the goal, he thinks of others before himself.

A good leader is humble. God says that if we are proud that He will humble us, but if we are humble He will exalt us. In conversations with people, there are those who tend to talk in such a way as to give themselves glory. They are opinionated and are quick to defend their idea or opinion, they tend to be unteachable and uncorrectable.

A good leader is not argumentative. He is secure enough in who he is that he doesn’t need to be right or have things go his way. A person who is often in a debate with someone about something are poor leaders.

A good leader is not over-talkative. People who talk to much will not influence other people positively.

A good leader has strong self-control. He exercises self-control over his emotions and his tongue.

temperate, prudent, respectable, pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable,

Patty and I went out for dinner tonight for Valentine’s to the “Outback,” I had a Prime Rib and she had a pork chop. It was a very nice and enjoyable evening with a very nice lady. We spent some time remembering and telling stories about the early years of our marriage when it was far from wonderful with lots of anger, arguments, and hurt feelings. We both agreed that what changed our marriage over time was a rock-solid commitment in both of us to never get divorced, never say divorce, or even to ever think of divorce. Because of the strength of that commitment we were faced with a choice, either live the rest of our lives in misery fighting or learn to get along. In the early years it wasn’t an issue of loving each other and having a wonderful marriage, it was just learning how to get along with each other in peace and unity. But over the years as we grew in our faith, our walk with the Lord, and our character our love and devotion for each other grew stronger and stronger as well. It was a “what came first, the chicken or the egg,” situation. Was it our struggle to grow in our marriage that caused our Christian life to grow or was it the growth in our faith that caused our marriage to grow? I think it was a combination of both working together. God intends that struggles and challenges in relationships stimulate our relationship with Him to grow.

A major factor in every area of life is endurance, not giving up, not quitting, finding a way, and making choices on the basis of commitment not on emotions. My Dad used to say, “Always do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because it feels good.” According to Jesus the right thing is almost always the hard thing. Those who persevere, doing the hard thing will in the end be blessed by God.