New Career Strategies for a Changing World
Tom Shrader examines Solomon's perspective on work and career from Ecclesiastes 2, showing how life 'under the sun' leads to meaninglessness and despair. He offers four practical strategies for transforming your attitude toward work: celebrating a modest lifestyle, finding a job you can love, remembering work is temporary, and focusing on what you have rather than what you lack.
“If your idea is I can afford it, some of you have been blessed with great financial resources. If I can afford it, is the barometer, then all of a sudden, you can have virtually anything.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Afloat in a World That's Circling the Drain (2002)
Recorded: July 18, 2002
Duration: 43 min
Themes: work, contentment, purpose, materialism, simplicity, career, dissatisfaction, meaninglessness, career change, job dissatisfaction, workplace stress, financial pressure, midlife crisis, young professional, retirement planning, work life balance
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 2:17-23, Ecclesiastes 5, Ecclesiastes 5:19, Ecclesiastes 5:19-20, John 14-17, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
Theological Themes: ecclesiastes, solomon, wisdom literature, vanity, under the sun, biblical worldview, stewardship, eternal perspective
Full Transcript
But I guess it's technically session four, but we're nowhere close. If you're trying to track with us on this series, we've deviated from that schedule so far. The title of the series is How to Stay Afloat in a World that's Circling the Drain. The idea there is that there's a gravitational pull that is pulling us down.
We're looking at a variety of things and what we're saying is that it's time to realize we're living in a changing world. Here's what's so fascinating to me. Originally, we developed this material right at the beginning of the 90s. I think it was in 1990 if I'm not mistaken. It's fascinating to me how, as we talk about strategies for the 80s and into the 90s, how we've come through this whole cycle all over again.
The Changing Nature of Work and Career
What we're talking about today is careers, jobs. Maybe job is better than a career in terms of discussion. I don't know. In the past, we've kind of looked at different things. The job and the career had a different idea for us.
We looked at perhaps an income with an upside. In the 80s, there were guys and gals as well, but primarily gentlemen who would take a job, very little salary, and they were counting on the upside. They were called developers. Then that group went away, and another group came in, and they did kind of the same thing. They said, we'll take a salary, we'll count on the upside, and their upside went huge, and then the dot commerce kind of went away. So there's always this, and with this is the opportunity for advancement and long-term security.
The Endless Pursuit of Acquisition
The idea of acquisitions, and I'm going to talk a little bit about simple lifestyle today. I was watching a show on Christopher Columbus, and they were talking about Columbus' driving motive to get to the Far East, and it was primarily driven by commerce. There was silk that was being produced, but there was a middleman merchant who was marking it up, and then selling it into the European market. So the idea of Columbus was to cut out the middleman.
They spent an hour and a half developing this, and they were talking about a variety of things, this being a part of it. They're talking about how risky this is, how they assumed death would be a part of it for a majority, if not all of the people, that they would probably lose everything all the way. Now maybe I'm not very bright, but one of the thoughts I had was, why wouldn't you just go without silk? I don't know, if you said to me you're going to risk your life to get that shirt, which obviously I didn't, but it seemed to never occur to them. We're always in that acquisition mode, and then always looking for the future and the bright.
Here's what we're going to do today, spend about 10 or 15 minutes trying to help you survey to see if perhaps you have signed on for the job from hell, and then give you four strategies for a new career opportunity.
Learning from Solomon's Experience
Let me just encourage you as we take our time, our vacation time. Let me mention too, if you have a cell phone, don't forget to reach down and turn that cell phone off, that would just be aggravating and embarrassing to you, and we don't want that to happen. In that month that we have off, let me suggest, and some of you can do it way sooner than that, we talked last week about study John chapter 14, 15, 16, and 17, and that's Jesus speaking to the disciples the night before He died. Powerful stuff, great study.
I had not read the book of Ecclesiastes for a while, and I just forgot how good it was. Let me remind you, there's this guy Solomon, he's extraordinarily wise, we know him for that, but God seemed to allow Solomon to experience and live out your wildest fantasies. Whatever you thought would make you happy, Solomon had it. Whether it's sexual things, we mentioned he had a thousand women at his disposal, he was a builder, he was creative, he was all of these things. All those things you think would make you happy, and if you're sharp enough, you can learn from him.
Three Ways We Learn
We said this to you before, there are at least three ways we learn, there may be more, but probably they're all kind of subsets of this. One is to take in information. It can be in a book, it can be in a lecture, it can be in a tape, it can be whatever. That's one way to learn.
The second way is through personal experience. Don't touch the stove, it's hot. Yep, it's hot. That's another way to learn. I find that to be very expensive tuition. I mean, if you can avoid that, that's a good way to avoid.
The third way is to learn from other people, to listen to what they've had. That's why I personally find biographies so fascinating. It's not just somebody else's life, but to look, again, if I'm in Columbus's advice team, I'm saying, Chris, give up the silk, go to cotton, it'll be okay. But to learn from other people. Learn from Solomon.
Solomon's Diary of Disillusionment
Solomon had all the stuff you say will make you happy, and then he sits down and he writes this diary, the book of Ecclesiastes. We're going to take you through it. If you have your Bibles with you, it's going to be very helpful if you open them. It's always hard without the text, so let me just read it to you.
Ecclesiastes chapter 2, and we're going to look at chapter 2, verses 17 through 23 for now. Solomon's talking about life. First thing is, you got that career or that job from hell, it's just no passion for your activity. Solomon writes this in Ecclesiastes 2:17, "So I hated life because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, chasing after the wind."
Now, if you're going to read the book of Ecclesiastes, you better get that phrase "under the sun." Solomon's talking to us about life as we look to our left and right and front and back. Solomon said, here's man's view of life. If I limit my perspective to man's view of life, Solomon said, I hated it. I hated my work because it was meaningless. Not only that, there's, you know this, there's no stability there.
Verse 18: "I hated all the things I toiled for under the sun because I must leave them to somebody else." I can't take any of this with me. And it starts to infiltrate everything around me. There's no guarantees. So my passion wanes and there's no stability.
Verses 19 through 21: Solomon writes, "And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all his work into which he's poured his efforts and skill under the sun. It's meaningless. My heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom and knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to one who hasn't worked for it. It's meaningless."
You Have No Control Over Results
You have no control. You have no control over the results and you have no control eventually over that outcome. You can work and work. You've had this happen. Let me relate it from the real estate business. You've got this deal. You found this piece of property. You've got this building. You find a buyer. You put it in escrow. You do absolutely everything correctly. You've done all the things, due diligence and everything that goes with it.
Money's gone hard and obviously at this point is passed to the seller. Broker not involved in that. Passed to the seller and now something totally outside of your control happens and the deal blows. You've done all your work and you don't get paid.
The flip side of it is you've had that deal. Here's the phrase you use, that fell into your lap. What does that mean? It means you didn't do anything. It just happened.
Now, this is not an anti-work message. This doesn't say you don't have to work, but it just says, listen, we do all that we can do, but ultimately God is the one who seems to control the results. I know people, I'll bet you do too. I'll bet you have them in your office. I'll bet in your office there's 25 salespeople. I'll bet if you talk to the top five, you get one attitude. I'll bet if you talk to the bottom five, I'll bet you'll at least have one of them say, "You know what? I don't get it. I'm smarter than everybody else in here. I work harder than everybody else in here. I have more product knowledge than everybody else in here." And then you get to say to them, "Well, I guess being smart and working hard and knowing the market isn't going to make you successful." We can't control those things.
When Work Becomes Meaningless
I had a friend who was overseeing one of the divisions of the RTC when they were just disposing of property all over the place. Everybody, he had 40 people working for him. Everybody working for him knew that 30 days from that day was the last day they were going to work. That was it. Didn't matter what you did. Didn't matter how hard you worked. Didn't matter if you worked. Thirty days from now, you're gone.
You should have walked into that place. It was a great object lesson. Walk into that place. Try to get a phone call returned in that environment. Try to get something done. There wasn't. They just sat around. And it was very interesting. And I said, "You know what? If a businessman was really smart, this is the time he'd be in here. Because if you find somebody in this environment working, that's the guy, that's the gal you want to hire."
Deflated. I'm not advising you to become deflated with this. I'm saying just get a grip on this. It's the fourth thing. And you're not going to find a sense of satisfaction ultimately here under the sun.
The Search for Satisfaction
Solomon asked this question: "What does a man get for all his toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun?" So here's the building. There's passion that's gone. There's no guarantee. There's no stability there. I can't control the outcome. Solomon's saying, where am I going to get a sense of satisfaction or fulfillment here?
Here's something I've heard a lot lately: "Work isn't fun anymore." I've heard a lot of that lately. Work's not fun. Not even fun. I guess in the old days you just went and laughed all day and had fun. And now you don't have fun. What we're really saying is there's no purpose and there's no meaning. Obviously you know we're going to come back and clean this up in a minute. But understand what we're looking at under the sun from man's perspective of man's life.
So Solomon asked the question: "What does a man get for all his toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun?" And then He answers it in verse 23: "All His days, His work is pain and grief. All His nights, His mind doesn't rest. And this is meaningless."
The Pressure That Never Stops
You can't escape the pressure. In your life, alarm clock is a luxury. You don't need it. You are sleeping like a baby. You sleep two hours, wake up and cry, go to the bathroom, go back to sleep, wait for two hours, and then go through this exercise again. I can't get away from this. I can't even rest here. My mind is going as my head hits the pillow. That's what He's saying.
We used to have one of our family members. Oh, we loved Him. Very, very special member of our family. We loved Him so much we buried Him in the alley. His name was Mikey and He was our hamster. And we loved Mikey. I loved Mikey more than anybody because Mikey gave me more illustrations of your life than anybody I had ever seen.
The Hamster Wheel of Life
Mikey would get up whether it was August 7th or Christmas Day and every day was the same. He would stretch about three hours and then go back over under all these shavings and sleep until five. Then He'd come out and stretch again and take a little bit. He'd get on that wheel and maybe take about two laps. And then He'd drink a little, eat a little, and then He'd go to bed.
And then about 9 o'clock, 9:30, He came out for real and Mikey would go solid until about 4, 4:30. Then He'd go back in the corner and disappear again. He became an icon. I'm sorry for most of you. He became a picture of your life just going through that motion.
I was driving over Lincoln on my way to La Posada this morning. Ahead of me, in the middle of the block, I see the brake lights flashing. Well, you don't have to be very bright to know if you're in Paradise Valley and the brake lights are flashing in the middle of the block that there's a police officer sitting there. Oftentimes it's photo radar, but I didn't see photo radar. Well, I slowed down. Not that I needed to. I slowed from 40 to 35 just to make sure. Sure enough, there's the guy sitting there.
The reason I laughed is because that's the illustration I was going to use today. You see these guys and they go—if you're going to work and they tell you how fast you're going, what would be great is if they have one of those where you could see what the guy was thinking. I think that would be so cool on the way to work. "Another day, I'm going to hate it. Driving home. I hate this job." That's what Solomon's saying. Solomon's saying that's life, my friend, under the sun.
The Reality of Life Under the Sun
I don't care really whether you accept it or not, because that is a perfect picture of how most people view life and how all view it under the sun. What we need is a change of attitude. Now, really interesting word, attitude. One of my girls not long ago said we're talking about a girl and she said she's got such an attitude. Well, there's a lot of ways that the word's used. One of the ways Webster uses it is this way: a grid by which you evaluate all of life.
Here's the shift. Solomon said, if you evaluate life with an attitude, with a grid of under the sun, that's how you look at life. Then you will realize that it can't be controlled and that it's not stable and that there's no satisfaction and you'll lose your passion and you will feel so confined because you can't get away from it. So what you need is an attitude adjustment.
The Path to Attitude Adjustment
Solomon tells us how to find that attitude adjustment. Here's what we're saying in terms of a job or a career. I just expand it in terms of your life. There are five very, very simple things.
Number One: Celebrate the Freedom of a Modest Lifestyle
Ecclesiastes chapter five: "Then I realized it was good and proper for a man to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his toilsome labor." I think we're creeping into one of those times again. I'm not sure, but with all the stock market stuff and it's really serious. I'll tell you at our church, we have a lot of Intel employees and these guys were thinking, "Man, I'm going to be out of here in '03, '04" and they weren't thinking their house. They meant their career and they're watching those huge stock options they have just dwindle away.
Lots of people are in there and that's what I was saying about we've now done this for 13, 14 years. We've been through at least a cycle once or twice and there's not really much new and one of the things that's starting to catch on again is this simple lifestyle. Solomon says, "I realized that it was all right to be satisfied. In fact, it was good to be satisfied" in what? Food, drink, the simple things in life.
A Lesson in Simple Living
A couple of years ago, Susan and I were up in a condo in the mountains and it was real romantic. I mean, it was so romantic that even I could see it and it's a real romantic place and there's a fireplace and I thought, "Oh man, this is perfect. Kids are gone. This is great. What a lucky girl." That's what I kept thinking.
Well, I'm going to build a fire. So I have no skill and no patience in this area. I can't do this stuff. I don't like it. So I'm in and I'm messing around with this fire and she comes in and she said, "Do you want me to help you with this?" I said, "No, no, no, no. It's a man's job. I'll handle this." So I now have about an hour and 15 minutes in this fire and I got nothing. I got all I have is burnt newspaper. And she said, "Do you want me to do that, Tom? I can get that." I said, "Yeah, go ahead and try it." Probably 90 seconds. We've got an inferno coming out of there and I knew she knew this stuff.
So I get the fire. We get a couple of pillows. It's nice. So I said, "How you doing?" She said, "I'm all right." She said, "How big do you think this house is?" I said, "What?" "How big do you think the house is?" "Oh, how big do you want it to be?" "I don't know." I said, "I don't know. A thousand square feet." She said, "Do you think we could live in this place?" I said, "I don't know. Boy, you look nice. I don't know." She said, "Do you think we could live in this place?" I said, "Yeah, I think we could." She said, "Oh."
The Cost of What We Don't Need
Now my mind, I said, "You know what? I'm out of the mood here. You've ruined it for me." Because here's what I'm thinking. The house we live in is 2,700 square feet. So let's round it up to 3,000. That means two-thirds of the house we have, we don't need. And now I'm laying there thinking about this. That means two-thirds of the house I'm air conditioning, I don't need air conditioning. By the way, since I've seen you, I now own not just an air conditioner—that was two weeks ago, that was three weeks ago. I now own a new furnace too. So it's been a great summer for me.
So two-thirds of the air conditioner, I don't need. And I said, "You don't like to clean all that much. Nobody likes that. Two-thirds of your cleaning isn't needed." All of a sudden, it's interesting. Here's this thing we need and here's this thing we have, and I think we ought to wrestle with that difference. I'm not giving you an answer, and I'm not saying it's bad. Maybe you need 4,000 feet. I don't know. All I'm saying is, what's it costing me to have that stuff that I don't need?
I had a guy that came to me one time, and he said, "I'm really wrestling with this, and I want an answer, but I don't think the Bible speaks to it." And I said, "All right, what is it?" And he said, "I want..."
to know if it's okay for me to buy a house in the mountains. What I appreciated is he didn't say cabin, because I've been with these people that say cabin. You get up there, it's 5,000 square feet. He said, no, it's a house, big house.
I said, well, let me give you my insight. I can just go through this. The Bible is probably silent on whether you should buy this, but there's probably some principles. He said, yeah, I can guess what they are. I said, what would you guess? He said, well, probably what everybody's asking me. Here's the first thing they asked me: Can you afford it? And it so happens that I can.
I said, all right, then what? He said, then they ask, is it an unhealthy desire that you have for this thing? He said, I've wrestled with that, and it's not. In fact, I really could take it or leave it. It'd be nice to have, but we could rent a place. I could take it or leave it. So he said, after I go through this process, what they come back to me is to say, it's okay for you to get it.
At this point, I haven't said anything yet. I said, well, how do you feel about that? He said, well, it's kind of interesting to me. Then he gives the answer I would have given. He said, just because I can afford it, they're saying okay. Just because I don't really want it or need it, I can have it. So he said, all of a sudden, if I follow this, my life is filled with everything that I can afford, but by my own assessment, I don't need and I don't really have to have or even really want.
That's exactly what happens. See, if your idea is I can afford it, some of you have been blessed with great financial resources. If I can afford it is the barometer, then all of a sudden, you can have virtually anything. See, this is hard stuff. I can't give you an answer. You well know that you can buy a car that will get you from here to Gilbert for 15 grand or certainly less, but a new car for 15 grand or one for 115 grand. Both will transport you from here to Gilbert. So apparently the issue isn't just transportation. There's something else at play.
All I'm saying is it's helpful to celebrate a simple lifestyle.
Find a Job You Can Love
Here's the second thing: Find a job you can love. Here's what Solomon says: Then I realized that it's good and proper for a man to eat and drink and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor. Find a job you can love.
Absolute truth story happened in here on a Thursday. I was dealing with this stuff before and I said, you got to fall in love with your job. You can't fall in love with your job. Girl comes in the next week and she said, I did what you told me to do. I said, I don't remember talking to you. She said, oh, you didn't talk to me. You were just talking about it in the group. I said, really? Yeah. She said, I went back. She said, I don't love my job. I just went back and quit. You said, if you don't love your job, quit it. And so I quit.
I said, babe, there's a little more into this. We baby step our way to resignation. Find a job you can love. The easiest way to do it is to fall in love with the job that you have. That's the easiest way to do it.
I believe, and I've been after different guys to develop this thought because I know I'm not going to, I believe there's this giant market that's kind of brushed on in the Christian world, but never really captured of people who need to make their job a significant part of their ministry. Solomon repeats this all the way through here. Find satisfaction in your work, find satisfaction in your work, enjoy your work. Here you go. Rejoice all the days of your life in your work.
The Wall Street Journal says this: on average, you work 55 hours a week. Many of you work way more than that. Many of you work way less and that's why it's an average. You sleep 40 hours a week. You got to drive to and from half hour a day. So there goes another five, six, seven hours a week. You've got personal grooming and exercising and eating and relaxing. Pretty soon that number's bumping up toward 130, 140. We only got 168 hours.
If that 55 hours does not become meaningful to you, you're going to get a sense that your life is meaningless. I believe that for most of us, one of the easiest, simple, readily available areas of ministry is work, but we tend to not do it.
Why We Avoid Ministry at Work
I'm not sure why, though I think I've got some idea. We would rather cold call for Jesus, knock on the door and say, Hey, I'm with ABC church. Do you know Jesus? No. Well, here you go. Pray a prayer. Do you want to pray this prayer? Yeah. Boom. And you walk and then you go back to the rally and everybody's excited. Oh, we're excited. Look at what God's doing and all this. I'm not putting that down. I'm just saying that seems to be, as unappealing as that may be to some, that seems to be more appealing than going into the office and letting your light shine right there.
I think the reason is if I'm going to be with you 55 hours a week, my life is going to have to change. We just had 525 kids at camp. The last night we were there, I said this to them: you're making a mistake right now, because what you're thinking is you're having this great experience and it relates to this place. It doesn't, it's got nothing to do with the ocean. It's got nothing to do with a meeting room. It's got nothing to do with all of us being in this magnificent spot.
Here's what happened over these five days. You came in contact with another person and they dumped in your life and you had the opportunity to dump your life into others. That you can replicate because that's not bound by geography. That's what happens. When we take these dads, that's been our concerted effort to take 25-30 dads with us. When we take the dads with us, the only problem we have is once they get there,
They seem to think like junior hires. But once we get by that, and the dads quit throwing water balloons and eggs at each other, all of a sudden these dads are saying, "I haven't had an experience like this since my days in college." Well, what happened? All of a sudden there was a commonality of purpose and direction and they're just moving ahead.
I think you can find that at work. Let me help you out here. They didn't hire you to evangelize. Your primary job there is not to evangelize. If you're taking company time and you're out passing out tracts, that's not right. You're cheating your employer. Yet by the same token, there's dialogue and contact and inevitably you become salt and light in the midst of this and you begin to generate a thirst. Find that job and love that job. And do it now.
The Problem with "Halftime" Thinking
There's a book that was written a few years ago called "Half Time." It was written by a guy by the name of Bob Buford. Very popular book and a good book. I mean, there's some good ideas in it. Buford's basic premise is this: plus or minus age 50, 45 to 55. So let's say plus or minus age 50, something changes in your life. All of a sudden those things that drove you as a young man or a young woman, those things are gone. The kids are now pretty much raised. Now you've established your career. Now you're moving on. The way that Buford says it is this: you move from success to significance.
Here's the phenomena. When I first read the book, because I liked a lot of it, when I first read this book, though, I had a flinch, a negative flinch. And as I began to give this book to young men, they came back with the same flinch. Here's what they said: "Well, I guess I just pursued success for the first 20 years of my life." See, that's what I didn't like about that book. It doesn't say, "Oh, I'm going to be successful till here and now I'm going to be significant here." I'm supposed to be significant at every stage of my life. And somehow work's got to feed into that.
Remember: This Work Assignment Is Temporary
Here's the third point. Remember that this work assignment is temporary. My father started at Davenport Bank and Trust Company in June of 1948 and retired in June of 1990 after 42 years. And it was a temporary assignment.
This is my attempt at trying to make it valid in your eyes. This is a fax. It's an old fax. I got it October 7th of 1991. I forgot I had it. I'm glad I found it because it's one of my favorite illustrations of one of the saddest comments on life I've ever read. This was a memo from somebody in the home office to all of the employees regarding a guy who has died. We'll call him John Doe and his wife Judy.
Let me just read it to you: "To all employees from [the home office and his name]. I regret that I have to inform you that John Doe passed away over this weekend. John was an employee of the plant for over 45 years and I'm sure we will greatly miss him. I talked to his wife Judy and she is planning no public service for John. She has asked that since neither John nor she have a favorite charity, that if you want to give something in the memory of John, donate to your favorite charity. If you'd like to send a card to Judy, here's her address."
The Tragedy of a Meaningless Legacy
Isn't that sad? That's 45 years. 45 years. Oh, by the way, he won't be into work today. That's basically what it says. And then these people are so pitifully lost that she couldn't even make up a charity. She couldn't even say the Cancer Fund or the Salvation Army or the United Way. This is one of the saddest things I've ever seen.
And this, my friend, unless you intervene, is your eulogy. 45 years, he won't be in. If you want to send a card to his widow, that might be a good idea. Cheer her up. That's exactly what this says.
We need to get this idea that everything is temporary. I don't know, I guess I need to hear it over and over again myself so I shouldn't be surprised, but I don't know how many times we need to go through this drill. I feel sometimes like talking to your kids. How many times do I have to tell you? How many times do I have to go through this?
How Quickly We Forget Life's Fragility
We go through 9-11. We've got our whole week or two of mourning and grieving. I can go back. 9-11 is so rich in illustrations of how lost we are. Forget the tragedy part of it. That'll work itself out.
We had people who were interviewing people two days later saying, "Someone held a door for me today. Someone said hello to me today. It's a new city." Really? I mean, are you that lost? Are you so lost that we've given up even saying hello? "A new day has dawned in New York City." I haven't been to New York City. I'll bet you we're close to where we were. Don't know. Just guessing. We certainly know the rest of the nation is.
We know that in less than two weeks the church and synagogue attendance dropped to normal and is now below pre-September 11th levels. How many times do you need to hear this? That's what Solomon says: "I realized then that it's good and proper for a man to eat and drink to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of the life that God has given Him. That's his life." It's a few days. Don't know how long you're going to be here. Maybe you're going to be there 42 years. Maybe you're going to be there 45 years. Do you understand this is a temporary assignment?
The Eternal Perspective on Temporal Work
Paul says it this way, right into the church of Corinth. He says, "Our momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. For the things that we look at are temporal. The things we don't see are eternal." And we have a tough time getting by the temporal.
I'll tell you something that I've seen and I think it's real and I think it's true. And momentarily we kind of renege on it a little bit. But most of us have been so blessed with a good life here that earth is more appealing than heaven. I'm at the Hotel Del and they're bringing me food. It doesn't get much better than this.
Heaven's not better than this, is it? We said this to you before. If you could take this life you have here and make it absolutely perfect, get rid of all the sorrow, get rid of all the hardship, make every day a day at Pebble Beach or at the beach or in the mountains, get rid of work, get rid of toilsome labor. If you could have all of that, but not have Jesus, would you take it?
Most of you will say no with your head, but your heart's going, I think I would. I'm not really sure. See what separates all of this, because that's in a sense heaven, what separates that from where we are now is the presence of Christ. And somehow I need to get in my head and keep it there and remind myself, and it seems that I have to remind myself every day, that this is temporary and fading away. This isn't real. So all of a sudden my attitude changes and I begin to see things differently.
Focus on What You Have, Not What You Lack
That's what Solomon says. Two more things. He says, here's a great premise. Why don't you focus on what you have, rather than what you lack. Ecclesiastes 5:19, "Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them, to accept that lot, to be happy in that work, that's a gift from God."
I remember the day that Susan and I decided to not move. We're in a phase now where it looks like we're going to move. But we've been in this house almost 21 years. And probably, I don't know, 12, 13 years ago, we were thinking about moving. So we went out looking at model houses. And the more models we saw, the worse our house looked. The more carpet we saw, the dirtier ours was. The more grass and landscaping we saw, the more sterile our rocks and our landscape became.
One day we're driving home and I said to Susan, let's stay where we are. And she said, fine. And it was like somebody lifted a hundred pounds off our shoulders. All of a sudden, I was sitting in there the other night, because we've had a dog problem over the years. A yapper. We got a yapping dog. And so I can't, I'm not, I'm kind of a non-confrontational guy like that. So I wrote him a note. I could never say, hey, your dog's barking.
One night we're sitting there and I said to Susan, she said, what? And I said, there's no yapping. And I'm saying, you know what? This is a great house. This is a great house. You can hear the freeway from where we are, but if you're really quiet, it sounds like the ocean. It's a great house. And these bedrooms that are, these are great. This is a great house.
The Power of Gratitude
I'm not into a lot of psychobabble, but I'll tell you this. If you start thanking God for the things you have, rather than dreaming about the things you don't, all of a sudden, your life just gets a lot better. All of a sudden, things just get better. And that relates to the spouse you have, the kids you have, the job you have, the car you drive, everything.
We can become so, I'm watching a show the other night, Great Vacation Homes. And this guy's got this house and it's on the beach and it's on a hill and I'm thinking, man, I wish I had that. And after about five minutes, I said, this is stupid. This is dumb. I'm not going to buy a vacation home. Not even in the market for a vacation home. If I had a vacation home, I don't have the time to even go to it. This is dumb.
But I got a glimpse of how easily I can become discontent by looking at what I don't have, rather than thanking God for what I do have. And I will tell you that relates to every area of your life. Every area of your life.
Bury the Past and Seize the Day
The last thing is to bury the past and seize the day. So, let me put these together for you, Ecclesiastes 5:19 and 20. "Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot in life, to be happy with his work, this is a gift from God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with the gladness of his heart."
So, all of a sudden, rather than be overwhelmed by a passionless life that has become meaningless because I'm living it under the sun, but now I begin to understand who God is. I begin to praise Him for who He is, thank Him for who He is, recognize Him for what He's done. I'm celebrating the simplicity of my life. I'm in love with this job, or at least with the people in this job. I understand it's temporary. All of a sudden, I focus on what I have, rather than what I don't have. All of a sudden, my heart's filled with gladness of the day.
And here you go. I can't change the past and I can't control the future, so why don't I just enjoy the day? These are so simple, but I'm today going, I've got to drive to Tucson, the old Pueblo, that dirty, rotten place down there, Tucson. I've got to go to Tucson. All of a sudden, I thought, well, wait a minute. I'm going to have Susan with me. We can talk. I've got two or three stories that I wanted to share with her last night, and I thought, save them for the trip. Give us something to talk about.
All of a sudden, I thought, you know what? I'll bet this will go by pretty fast. It's an hour and a half with the person I love more than anyone else in the world. Why am I dreading the drive to Tucson?
Focus on What You Can Control
Now, that may sound very simple, but I have discovered that in our life, we've got problems. Many of them we can control. We can get so focused on, I can't control this, I don't control this, I can't control this. Well, many of the things you do in your life, you can control.
Most of the people that come in to see our counseling staff or our disciplers, most of them come in with problems that they caused. You made a bad decision. Now, we can't change that. And you can't control the future. But let's take care of those things we can control.
I think Solomon's saying, here's a real simple life. If you are so absorbed in what God has done for you and what God will do through you, that all of a sudden, most of what becomes
stumbling blocks just fade away. They may have looked like they were high as mountains, and now they're little speed bumps. The only thing that's changed is your attitude.
Let me help you out here. I don't mean just a mindset. I mean the grid by which I look at everything around me.
Living for the Lord Where You Are
Now my job—we have so many people that say, "Oh, I want to go to the mission field. I want to go live for the Lord." Here's the question we ask them: What are you doing where you are right now? "Well, I want to go to Pakistan and do it."
Okay, let me help you out here. If you aren't doing it here, why would you do it in Pakistan? This is a big question. Take a look at that.
Finding Excitement in God's View of Life
I believe, because I've seen it over and over again, if you change your mind so that your view is God's view of life, that dull, dreary life is filled with excitement. You give up trying to change the past, and you give up trying to control the future, and you just enjoy the day that He's given you.
Before you know it, you've enjoyed a week. After that, you've enjoyed a month. After that, you've enjoyed a year. Pretty soon, you've lived a lifetime where you've seen God work.
Two more weeks before we break for summer vacation. We hope we'll see you back here next week.
Father, help us see this truth. Let it change our life. God, help us understand life from Your view. God, we love You. Thank You for what You're doing in our life. Thank You for what You're doing in this place. God, in the middle of summer, look around, see the room so full. These people have so much to do. God, I pray this time touches their heart. We pray that to You in Jesus' name. Amen.