I used to referee High School basketball games years ago when my boys were in High School. I wasn’t a trained professional, just a parent trying to help out and volunteering to help the team save some money. Refereeing games, especially important games in tournaments was a terrible experience and I didn’t do it for very many years. I tried as hard as I could to see everything and to make good calls, but it was an impossible task, so I just did the best that I could. I had a conversation after a game with a particularly critical and verbal parent, I said to him, “If I make a bad call, do you think that I purposely decided to make a bad call to help the other team or to make you mad at me? or could it be that I am trying as hard as I can to call a perfect game, but because I am not perfect in my vision or judgment I make mistakes?” “And a second question, does your yelling and cussing at me help me to do a better job or does it get me so uptight and nervous about making a bad call that I do worse?” And then I added, “ If you don’t know the answers to those two questions, I do, and I will tell you if you cared to know.”

I thought the Super Bowl was an amazing game with great performances from both quarterbacks, and I enjoyed it very much, but it got ruined a little bit with all the criticism over the holding call at the end of the game. It was on all the Sports news and social media as if the outcome of the game was illegitimate. There was a non-call of holding on the same defender that was clearly holding and cost the Chiefs a first down early in the game, but it didn’t get much attention. There is no perfectly called game because there are no perfect referees. That is life and it is part of football. It seems that the fussing about outcomes and blaming others for those outcomes has become a national disease.

I was very impressed with the defender who got called for the holding penalty, James Bradberry, who when asked about the play admitted that he did hold and the call was right. The Eagles coach, Nick Sirianni when asked about it said, “that call is not what cost us the game, there were so many other calls in the game, the Chiefs just played better than we did.” It is nice to see character on display like that, it is too bad we don’t see more of it in our political leaders.

Something I am very sure of is that I want to represent Jesus Christ well as a believer, follower, and an ambassador for Him. Very few things cause a Christian to be a poor representative for Jesus as much as grumbling, complaining, and being critical and judgmental does. Being critical of referees is part of the game and part of the fun and group experience of of a bunch of guys watching a game together, but I try to leave that behind when the TV gets turned off, and sometimes I succeed.

Jefferson Baptist Church men’s ministry just finished their “Sportsman’s Show” at the Albany Fairgrounds. I haven’t heard any numbers from anybody, but from my perspective, it looked like a great success with thousands of people attending the event, and it looked like everyone was having a good time, including the vendors. There is a good group of leaders working together in unity to plan and oversee this major event, everything rises and falls on leadership.

This weekend was the annual “Special Offering” for our Missions Ministry” which is a very large ministry impacting thousands of people all over the world. This ministry oversees church planting, schools, orphanages, businesses, and many different missionaries all over the world. There is a good team of leaders working together in unity to plan, oversee, and manage this really big ministry. Everything rises and falls on leadership.

JBC has Sunday School on Sundays with lots of kids, and a Junior Church program. We have an AWANA program on Wednesday nights with several hundred kids involved. Next year we will have a regular school at JBC from preschool through the third grade. We have a Junior High program and also a Senior High program, and a Young adults ministry. This entire children’s ministry has great leaders who work together in unity and oversee, manage, and plan. Everything rises and falls on leadership.

We have an amazing adult ministry, music ministry, small group ministry, woman’s ministry, seniors ministry, and many others that are all led by great leadership teams that work together well in great unity. Everything rises and falls on leadership.

The cool thing about all the ministries that are functioning at JBC is that I don’t have to do anything to keep any of them going successfully. The best thing I do is stay out of the way. The funny thing is that there was a time in the past when I did everything. It is quite amazing how God will build His church using every person in the church who all have different gifts and abilities, when I stay out of the way.

Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Matthew 17:20 if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

John 14:12 the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do;

There is a number of areas that the mature and wise follower of Jesus must have balance in his life. When the Bible says I can do “all things,” it doesn’t mean “everything“ or “anything,” it means those things that are God’s will for me. God has put us in a world with gravity, with weeds, and He has put us in bodies that get tired, and sick, and old.

I have a limited amount of time. I have a limited amount of energy, I have a finite amount of wisdom, a finite amount of resources. A very hard truth for me is that I am limited in what I can accomplish. What is an even harder truth for me to accept is that I am now more limited than I was a few short years ago, I am going backward in what I can do in a day.

The acceptance on my part of the fact that I am not God, not even close, doesn’t mean I am going to roll over and resign myself to doing nothing. I will press on, work hard, set goals, dream dreams, and go to bed tired every night. But it does mean that I will steward my time wisely, take care of my body, plan my days well, take naps when needed, take time off to fish, and spend time with family and friends just talking and enjoying fellowship not getting uptight about not getting something done. Every person is a package of God-given gifts and abilities and of God-assigned limits. Any person who denies the limits that we have will live in frustration, they will struggle with feelings of being a failure, and will eventually burn out.

An area of life that is opening up for me more and more as I get older is mentoring and training men for ministry and coaching some who are already in ministry. As I teach being faithful and disciplined to keep the basic spiritual disciplines, to write goals, to press on and work hard, I will also teach the importance of running the race God has given us with endurance and wisdom, and recognizing that the three “R’s” , rest, relaxation, and recreation will be a key part of the endurance factor in our life.

Every night I ride my stationary bike. Sometimes it is no problem, but most nights I am tired and I don’t want to ride that stupid stationary bike, so I call it my torture machine. In the picture, you can see the iPad that I read while I ride and that helps a lot. I also watch videos on YouTube about fishing, hunting, car mechanics, and sermons from some of my favorite preachers. Every year I and several others go on a bicycle trip usually a couple of thousand miles or more. We camp each night, set up tents, cots, sleeping bags, and cook dinner on a camp stove, and did I mention that the seat is hard.

I enjoy the bike trip and the daily riding for 8 to 10 hours very much and I am looking forward to the trip with great anticipation. This year we are going down the Pacific coastline from Canada to Mexico, and I am anticipating some very beautiful days of riding.

So why do I like riding my bicycle outside for long, tedious hours that are often quite hard, but hate riding a bicycle for one hour in a warm, comfortable house on a recumbent bicycle that has a very comfortable seat.

I have been pondering this question for several years and haven’t come to a conclusion yet that I believe is accurate and true. I asked my college-age granddaughter what she thought and she said that I love the feel of the wind in my face and the constant feeling of risk that I might fall down or get hit by a car.

It reminds me of Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?

There is a whole lot about myself that I don’t know or understand, but I keep working on it so I can grow and always do what I do for the right reason and motive.

Waiting on the Lord is a call for patience. Patience is an absolute major requirement if we are going to accomplish anything significant with our life for God. Patience is a character trait that can’t function without wisdom because patience can quickly and easily turn to laziness and indecisiveness. There is a delicate balance between passion and patience. We are required to be patient because we are not sovereign, and in order to achieve our goals, many things over which we have no control need to fall into place. Impatience tempts us to try to control things we have no power to control, to create change we cannot create, and to move what we have no ability to move.

Over the 46 years of leading Jefferson Baptist Church as Pastor, I have made more bad choices because of impatience than for any other reason. Impatience has caused me to get irritated with people who slow me down or who create roadblocks. Impatience has caused me to get irritated at God because He isn’t fixing problems like I want Him to. It is interesting to me that I have struggled with impatience because farmers as a whole are more patient than most. After all, the weather is such a major part of success and almost every farmer knows he can’t make it rain.

I have come to believe that the reason God requires much prayer for Him to do much is because prayer for the same thing over and over for a long period of time develops patience in us with God. And we have no idea how much prayer is needed or how long we must persevere in prayer before God acts. Waiting on the Lord and praying to the Lord are basically synonymous in the Bible.

God’s main goal is to make us like Himself in character, and He knows that waiting is the main catalyst for growth, so because I have so much growing to do I am prepared to wait patiently for God to work and to persevere in prayer. Come on down to the “five days of prayer “ and wait with me, and you too can grow.

I was supposed to talk to missionaries and church workers in Ecuador via Zoom on the “Blessings of Corporate Prayer“ this morning, but I got confused about the starting time because of the three-hour time difference so I missed it. Oops! I hate it when I do that. I don’t know what the situation was there in Ecuador where they had gathered together to listen to me speak, whether they came from a long distance or what. I am not going to ask, I already feel bad.

Making a mistake that we pay the consequences for is frustrating like driving to fast and getting a ticket, or being late for an interview and losing a great job opportunity. But making a mistake that others pay the price for can be devastating if serious enough. A Dad fell asleep while driving, went off the road and hit a tree and his three kids that were in the car all died. A doctor makes a mistake in surgery and his patient is paralyzed.

Sometimes the mistake is obvious and the consequence is immediate, but often the mess up is imagined and the results are fuzzy as to why. A son gets addicted to drugs in High School and dies from an overdose, and both parents grieve over their self-perceived poor parenting. I miss an appointment to preach on the value and importance of corporate prayer and then in my imagination I perceive that a revival that was poised to happen fizzles out. Hardly ever is there a marriage that goes bad, or a family that breaks up, or a growing, committed Christian that backslides I don’t think that if only I had preached better, prayed more, or counseled wiser this wouldn’t have happened.

But I do believe that I have learned over the years how to honestly, responsibly, and humbly evaluate situations, choices, and results, confess to the Lord acts and choices that I have made that were truly wrong or unwise, experience His forgiveness and grace, and learn and grow from it, so that hopefully my future decisions and choices are much wiser, ending up with much better results.

Remorse and guilt over consequences that others experience, whether real or perceived, because of us are difficult to deal with and can paralyze us so that we don’t attempt to do anything great with our life ever again. That is a bad place to stay. I sought out wise people to talk to so as to think right, get on with life, and set some more B-HAG’s, Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals.

Have you ever had a time when you felt like you were just a beginner because of being around someone amazing? I have experienced that several times in my life. One time when I went to a seminar and the speaker was Chuck Swindoll I had the privilege of meeting him and talking with him for a few minutes. Another time the speaker was John MacCarther and I had the opportunity to be in a 30-minute conversation with him and several other pastors. I was afraid to talk too much because didn’t want to appear stupid. And tonight at our “Five Days of Prayer” we had someone share about their ministry, and their accomplishments were so amazing that I felt very insignificant. I marveled over what they had done with their life, and I thanked the Lord that there were such giants of the faith still walking the earth. The cool thing about such people is that when I am around them I get encouraged and motivated to personally do more, accomplish more, and pay the price.

I have been doing a very poor job of getting enough sleep lately. Probably the biggest problem I have with my Parkinson’s is getting a good nights sleep, because when I move while sleeping the muscle pain wakes me up. Because I don’t sleep well I tend to just not go to bed, and after a while, I start having consequences from that bad discipline, which is mostly just groggy thinking and fatigue. I got up at 4:30 am and went to the start of the five days of prayer this morning, after sleeping for three hours, but I left after one hour. I went home, took a sleeping pill, some Parkinson’s medication, some Ibuprofen, slept six hours straight, and now I am feeling good.

Sleep is obviously a basic human, physical need that needs to happen systematically or we don’t function well. The consequences of not meeting this need are obvious and quick to happen, and force us to get disciplined in meeting it. Other basic disciplines in our life if not practiced faithfully result in consequences, but they are not as obvious or as quick to happen so it is much easier to let them slide.

The basic disciplines of the Christian life, Bible reading, scripture memory, prayer, both private and corporate, gathering with other believers for the purpose of giving and receiving encouragement, worship, learning, reflective thinking, self-examination, and confession of sin, and serving the body of Christ are essential for our character growth, our spiritual relationship with God, and our fruit-bearing. But many Christians are very undisciplined in making these happen in their life because the consequences are not obvious but they are very real and most are eternal, not just in this life.

The only way to maintain faithfulness in practicing the basic spiritual disciplines is to make specific, measurable goals for each of the disciplines, keep track of what you do religiously, and be in an accountability relationship.

Many argue with me on this requirement for faithfulness to the basic spiritual disciplines. Those who say that they do just fine without goals and accountability usually have a short list of disciplines and daily isn’t an essential part of the disciplines they practice. The result is mediocre accomplishments, minimal growth, if any, and increased entanglement in the world.

I am looking forward to a lot of things in the days ahead with great anticipation. Super fun or exciting things that we are looking forward to in the future make the difficult things in the present much easier to endure, so I think a lot about the future and the plans that I have. A major part of the anticipation is the planning for the future events. I love to plan and strategize about upcoming challenges and adventures.

On May 25th a number of us are leaving on a bicycle trip from Canada to Mexico on the Pacific coast. We are planning the route, the campsites, the equipment, and the food. I have several books written by those who have already done this exact trip and I read some of it each week which increases my anticipation tremendously.

I am going fishing for sockeye salmon and halibut in Alaska this summer, and I can hardly wait. I look at pictures from previous trips of all the fish we caught, I go over my fishing gear trying to think of anything I am forgetting. I have dreams most nights of fishing. I have a goal of learning how to catch halibut out of my drift boat instead of paying $300 for a charter. I am looking so much forward to that cool challenge.

My greatest of all future events in anticipation is being raptured and going to heaven with Jesus with my new glorified body.

1 Corinthians 15:51-52
Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

The first thing that will happen is that I will hear a trumpet sound. An amazing and beautiful sound that will come from above. It will be loud, I am sure and will demand immediate attention. The next thing that will happen is this old, tired, worn out, body will be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye to be just like the body that Jesus has. Then we will hear a voice, an amazing voice, that will command us, “come up here.” Then we will rise up from the ground and meet in the air, up above where the clouds are, in a huge gang of people, gathered around Jesus, and then off to heaven we go.

I may die before the rapture happens but I anticipate that it is going to be in the next 24 hours. I eagerly await His appearing, I look forward to it every day, I run over the event in my mind with the wildest of imagination. This great anticipation motivates me to pursue godly character growth every day, it keeps me rejoicing and grateful for my salvation provided by Jesus’s death on the cross. Life is good!

Hebrews 9:28
so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.

Weariness is the enemy of endurance, and the reason most don’t accomplish much with their life. The Bible says that we “will reap if we don’t grow weary.” Weariness is not caused by overwork, it is caused by discouragement, frustration, and a sense of failure. Weariness comes from the loss of vision for our life, a loss of purpose, a feeling that we are just treading water, going in circles, going nowhere, and accomplishing nothing of significance. Sometimes weariness is caused by physical pain, sickness, or limitations. Weariness is very common to those who are struggling in relationships and can’t seem to solve the problems that plague their relationships. People who are weary usually after a time simply quit, give up, and stop trying. I get weary and have had long seasons of weariness, but I know how to fix it, quick and easy, works every time. I go to the “five days of prayer” and I pray a lot, 40-plus hours. There is something very supernatural about sitting in the presence of God for long periods of time.