Things You Will Never Hear in Polite Conversation
Tom Shrader uses Job's story to address economic uncertainty and financial planning, showing how conventional wisdom—relying on plans, assets, networks, and positions—ultimately fails us. Through Job's devastating losses, he demonstrates that while practical planning isn't wrong, our ultimate confidence must rest in God's trustworthiness rather than worldly securities.
“God is trustworthy. You can trust Him with everything. You can trust Him with your resources. You can trust Him with your health. You can trust Him with everything.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Afloat in a World That's Circling the Drain (2008)
Recorded: February 07, 2008
Duration: 39 min
Themes: trust, suffering, planning, money, uncertainty, security, wisdom, faithfulness, facing financial hardship, economic uncertainty, losing job, retirement planning, breadwinner, business owner, middle aged, financial stress
Scripture: Job 1:2, Job 1:14-21, Job 2:9-10, Job 8:13, James 4:13-14, Proverbs 11:28, 1 Timothy 6:6, 1 Timothy 6:17, Jeremiah 17:5-6, Philippians 3:3-4, Proverbs 27:3, Psalm 33:17, Proverbs 3:25-26, Jeremiah 17:7, Psalm 91:1, Psalm 112:1-9
Theological Themes: providence, divine sovereignty, stewardship, worldliness, faith, testing, materialism, biblical wisdom
Full Transcript
Open your Bible to the book of Job. We developed this series in 1990, so we've got 23 years, and what's amazing is it just tells you what you know—things don't change a whole bunch. We titled it "Things You'll Never Hear in Polite Conversation," and it's based on the premise that most conversations we have are pretty surface. We don't go very deep, and frankly I think that's okay. I don't think you can have too many deep conversations with too many people.
I used to hang out—this is before I had an office and we didn't have cell phones—at the Coco's at Baseline and Dobson. They had a room in the back where you could pull the door and do a little meeting back there. There was a booth in the corner, and I would go back there. There were two or three servers, and literally it was like Tom's office. It was also not far from one of the large churches, so a lot of the older people from the church would meet in a group there.
I'm in there one day, and in comes 10 or 12—here's how I would describe it: you know it's going to be a separate check table. That's what you know is happening. So they sit down and they're talking, and it's like "What's your water bill?" "My elbow hurts." All this surface conversation. Then there's this dead silence. There's a lady at the table—get in your mind like Aunt Bee, only thinner. This little old lady. It's dead quiet, and this lady says, "Do any of you know how to make a Harvey Wallbanger?" I thought, "Wow." My point was that's as deep as the conversation ever got.
Going Beyond Surface Conversations
Well, I want to go to real substance today. I know some of you are thinking, "Hey, I'm way beyond this." Well, probably you aren't, and if you are, the people around you aren't. This is the kind of stuff that people need to hear and they need to deal with.
I want to take you through the flow of this and get it to the point where you can even deal with this yourself. If we don't get through it all, we start with some basic assumptions—what we would call facts. We have five of them. Then how do I approach those facts? Then the fallacy within that approach, then an alternative approach. We'll move through quickly and then some basis for dealing with the future. So you get the flow of this pretty clearly.
The Facts We Face
As I said, we did this in 1990. Here are the facts. Number one: the economic future is grim. It seems like—I don't know if grim, but uncertain. It feels that way all the time.
I got on a kick—next year is the 50th anniversary of Barry Goldwater running for president, and I'm going back and listening to some stuff. I found a political ad that he ran. It was a little boy on a bike, and it was saying, "You know, son, do you know that the government has taken this percent of your dad's pay?" I mean, you could run it today.
Sandy's in one of her modes, and she's moving some stuff. She said, "Tom, I think you want to look at this." She said, "I know you want it because you've hauled this from 1960 on." It was a bunch of political stuff I had, and there was a bunch of Goldwater stuff that I saved as this little guy in Davenport, Iowa. There was all this literature, and he put out a piece called "Till Debt Do Us Part." He was concerned about the size of the debt, and it was not very big.
It sent me on YouTube where I found Everett Dirksen. Remember Everett Dirksen? Senate Minority Leader, big voice. His daughter married Howard Baker. He was from Pekin, Illinois. Remember the mascot of Pekin? The Pekin Chinks, which is not a term you would use today and was subsequently taken care of. It just throws you back into the old days.
Dirksen is doing a national address, and here's what he said: "The debt ceiling is about to be raised to three hundred and thirty billion dollars, and we can't sustain that." So you start to think about all this in the middle of IRS gates and Oklahoma and all this. Remember the clock where it goes ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding? That's still going on. So I don't know—at best it's uncertain.
People Will Be Devastated
Here's the second thing: some people are going to be devastated. People are going to get killed economically and relationally.
You've got to get information that's reliable as you start to navigate your way through any decision. Sandy and I have been trying to figure out: should we move? Should we stay in our house? Do we do this? We need to do something to the kitchen. If we do something to the kitchen, we say yes to something and we say no to something else. How do you get that? How much information do you get?
Then you have to have some strategies that are in place—life 2.0, life 3.0, life 20.0. Then you've got to make some decisions. Then this is where so much breaks down. It's like the Christian life: this is not that hard to figure out, but it's hard to execute.
The Challenge of Execution
There's a guy that comes to the Peel study, and we're talking. I said, "How you doing? What do you do?" He said, "You know, I decided that I'm going to start eating correctly and exercising." Well, I couldn't—I mean, I make that decision once a month.
So I said, "Well, how are you doing?" He said, "I'm doing pretty well. I felt I needed to learn to cook." I said, "Well, how's that going?" He said, "I got the best cookbook with these recipes." I said, "Is that a hassle to cook and clean?" He said, "Well, I don't know. I've never done it."
"What are you doing as a workout?" He said, "I got this cool plan of aerobic and weight combination." I said, "Do you do that at home?" He said, "No, I had to join Lifetime." The Lifetime by us—I don't know about the other Lifetimes—but the Lifetime by us is crowded. I said, "All I've ever heard is how crowded it is in there."
The conventional wisdom says plan your work and work your plan. If ever there was a time to cover your assets, it's in moments like this. I was talking to a guy the other day and he said, "I'm not concerned about return on my investment. I'm concerned about return of my investment." I meet more and more people my age who are at a point where they're saying, "I know I need to do something, but I need to preserve capital."
You try to identify a network—who's on your team? Who can I solicit, not in a malicious way, but who can help me navigate these waters? If it's a career issue, I keep that resume updated. It's in a Word document. The only thing missing is the date—right now it says "wherever you are, so-and-so to present." You haven't figured in the date yet.
Then it's important, I think, to leverage this position. How do I build on this? By definition, I'm taking this entry-level position. It's changed radically from my father's generation. I was like that generation—it feels like toward the end of the guys that just assumed that whatever job they got was just a job.
A Changing Job Market
My freshman year of college, I'm working at Sears in the automotive department. Now anybody that knows me knows that would be like putting me at Home Depot—I wouldn't even know what to do. But they had a big catalog and a lot of answers in it.
My first day, I'm taking a break up in the break room, and there's this older guy—sweet guy—and he said, "I'm Art." I said, "Okay Art, I'm Tom." He said, "So what do you do here, Tom?" I said, "Well, I'm in automotives, and I don't think I'm going to last long there. It's not exactly my sweet spot. I'm not sure what would be here, but it's not that."
He said, "Let me give you some advice." I didn't find out until a week later—somebody had seen us and said, "That's the guy that runs the whole store. He's the big shot." So the two of us are there, and he said, "Let me give you some advice." I said, "All right." He said, "You need to buckle down and you need to find a career. This is an amazing company with an amazing retirement program."
Hey pal, I'm trying to get through this to get to Julie's house! That's all I'm thinking about, not thinking about anything other than that. But that was kind of the given then—you'd start at Sears and they had this thing, and you'd stay and work there. Well now they tell kids, if you're going to get out of college, by the time you're 35 you'll have four or five jobs.
Job's Prosperity Before the Storm
So the common conventional wisdom is: get the plan, do all these things. Here's a fallacy in this. When we look at Job, Job chapter 1 verse 2: Job had seven sons and three daughters. Here's the key—He's got 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, very many servants. And that man, this Job, was the greatest of all the men in the East. He's this extraordinary guy who is about to live life.
If you've never even seen a Bible, I can mention Job, and if we do word association—I say "Job," you tend to say "patience." Well, one of the things you learn about the study of the book of Job is he didn't have the patience of Job until the end of the book. There was a lot of stuff that he went through.
The Cascade of Disasters
If you're somebody who circles in your Bible, and you should, move over to chapter 1 verse 14. Job and His sons are eating and drinking in the house of the eldest brother. Verse 14: "A messenger came and said the oxen were plowing, the donkeys were feeding beside them, the Sabeans attacked them, took them, slew them, slew the servants, and I alone have escaped." So I would circle "messenger." The reason I encourage this—when I turn to this page, I see these circles, I immediately connect them in my mind. Would have never done it otherwise.
Verse 16: "While he was still speaking, another came and said the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped." So circle that word "another" in verse 16.
Verse 17: "While he was still speaking, another came. The Chaldeans formed three bands and raided the camels and took them and slew the servants, and I alone have escaped to tell you." Circle "another" again.
Verse 18: "While he was speaking"—circle "another," and now you see this pattern—"another came and said your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, and behold, a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people. They died, and I alone have escaped."
Job's Response to Loss
Now Job begins to reflect, and he says in verse 21: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I will return. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away."
There's an amazing principle there that we see mentioned throughout Scripture. It's the idea that God gives, God takes away. First Timothy 6: "Godliness plus contentment is great gain. I came into the world with nothing, I'll leave with nothing." For a long time, for me anyway, I couldn't figure out why does that appear in Job? Why is that in Ecclesiastes? Why does Paul use that argument in First Timothy 6?
I'm convinced the reason He uses it is to get our thinking to see the temporariness of stuff, the eternalness of our life, to begin to see things in the perspective that God would have for us.
When Things Get Worse
So Job is moving along, and somebody came to him and said, "Well, it's really bad, but at least you have your health." And then he's smitten with boils from his head to his feet. Just at a time when he needs her most, his wife comes and says—Job chapter 2 verse 9—"Job, I don't get this. Why don't you curse God and die?"
What's kind of interesting is Job lost what he wanted to keep and keeps what he'd love to lose, I think. And he said to her, verse 10...
a little circle, line, arrow, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall indeed we accept the good from God, not accept the adversity? It's the same idea that we see in Ecclesiastes 7:14, is that God brings upon us those moments of peace and yet calamity? In Job chapter 8 verse 13, such is the destiny of all who forget God, so perishes the hope of the godless. What he trusts in is fragile, what he relies on is a spider's web. He leans on his web but it gives way, he clings to it but it doesn't hold.
Go back to that outline. Here's my conventional wisdom: I'm relying on my plan and my assets and my network and the people I know and all that goes with it. And Job I think says you need to understand something—all of that is fragile.
Common Fallacies About Financial Security
Number one, your plans are unreliable. James chapter 4 verse 13 and 14, so in the upper right-hand corner, James chapter 4 verse 13 and 14. It's that familiar passage where James says, now listen, you say, today or tomorrow we'll go to such-and-such a city, spend a year there, carry on business, make money. Well you don't even know what will happen tomorrow, what is your life? You are but a vapor, here today and gone, up here for a little while.
You're making these plans. In the old days business-wise, we used to make plans that went in buckets like this: three year, five year, ten year. That used to be the old strategic plan. Now rarely—I mean you can do that but almost everybody as they're doing it going, this is a total throwing darts. We make a one-month plan and don't know if we can execute that.
It's not the Bible saying don't plan. It's saying just don't put the confidence in that plan. It's been interesting year for me to go through with Sandy and go, okay we got to plan this new life gig and we're trying to think about it and pull it together and strategize. The minute we figure something out, it's like two months later that piece has changed. So plan, but again the way we like to say it: write those plans in pencil and give God the eraser.
Here's the second thing: your assets are unreliable. Whoever trusts in riches, Proverbs chapter 11 verse 28, whoever trusts in riches will fall but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf. First Timothy 6:6, godliness plus contentment is great gain, if we have food and covering with those we should be content. First Timothy 6:17, Paul writes this, instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches.
The Illusion of Wealth and Happiness
I tend to trust in that. Larry Wright used to—I can see Larry, he couldn't get his arms up very high but he would do it this way—he would say riches are like a grease pig, you squeeze them and they're gone. That's part of it, but I think the other part of where I fix my hope on riches is I think what's going to happen, if I have this stuff I'll be happy.
I was talking to somebody the other day and I said that the poor people have it so much better than the rich people because the poor people still have the illusion that if they get something they'll be happy. I met—and I've been thinking about how to tactfully say this and I don't know if I'm capable of that—but I met at the neurological diagnostic laboratory the other day getting stuff tested for my hands and I'm in there. It's my first trip there so I'm filling out all this stuff.
There's a couple there and I don't know how to describe them and I don't mean this in any—this sounds so elitist and everything but they would be—it was I think a husband and a wife, they look like they didn't have a lot of financial resources but that doesn't mean they could have been duck dynasty for all I know, they may be really rich. Between the two of them they had maybe eight, nine teeth and she's really hurting and I found myself praying, God give her some relief. I mean I'm in there, I'm miserable but I don't seem to be as miserable as she is.
And her husband said you want a magazine and she said I don't think so and he said they're all movie magazines. So now I'm knowing, he said look at this and I'm going okay if I can stay focused I have an illustration coming out of this. She said yes and he goes look at this, this is—and he said I don't know her name and she said well she's really pretty and he said I think it's a bunch of surgery. So then he said this is so-and-so it's very famous wealthy movie star and he said he's got it made and his kids have it made and his grandkids have it made.
He went down this thing and all I could think of is that is the illusion—if I have something. And it's something number one it's permanent so that's a false assumption right, we know that. And number two, if I have stuff I've got it made. The assets are unreliable. Achievement goes with that.
Tom Brady's Empty Success
This is an interview from a few years ago with Tom Brady. And this is Tom Brady speaking. He said, why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? Now, let's stipulate Tom Brady's cool, okay? He went to the University of Michigan, but still in the Big Ten, okay? He's handsome. His wife is moderately attractive. He has a lot of resources. So it's all those things that you think that would make me happy.
And beyond that, you have three. Not just am I playing in the NFL. Not am I just good in the NFL. I'm not Dan Marino without a ring. I've got three of these. I'm running out of fingers. Maybe a lot of people would say, hey, man, this is what it is. I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think, God, it's got to be more than this. I mean, this isn't, this can't be all it's cracked up to be.
Reporter asked him if he had any answers. And Brady said, I love playing football. I love being a quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other...
parts of me that I'm trying to find out. And I don't read that anymore and go, "Wow." I read that and go, "That's what the Bible keeps telling us about this stuff."
Here's a third thing: Your network's unreliable. Jeremiah 17:5 and 6. This is what the Lord said: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man and depends on his flesh for his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord."
I'm at a PO one day, and there's a guy that came up, a guy in the community, a guy that many of you would know. And I said, "How are you doing?" He said, "This is the darkest day of my life." And I said, "OK." I mean, I don't know what to do there. I assume you're telling me because you want me to ask, you want me to pray for—you're telling me that for a reason, maybe just to tell somebody. I said, "Oh, I'm sorry." He said, "I've lost everything." I said, "I don't know why I came here." That's always encouraging. "I don't know why I came here, but I'm going to go from here to the attorney. I've lost everything. Everything's gone." And we talked a minute, and He left.
And this young guy came up and said, "Hey, I saw you talking to so-and-so." I said, "Yeah." And He said, "Do you know Him?" I said, "I know Him a little bit." And He said, "Can you introduce me to Him?" And I said, "Well, I'm not a pimp where I'm just hooking people up all day long. I mean, that's not my job. I'll periodically call guys and say, 'Will you meet with so-and-so?' But it's always couched in the 'nobody's looking for anything,' da-da-da-da-da." And He said, "Listen, I mean, I admire Him so much. I know that if I was part of His company, I know I could add value to that. And I want to be part of a successful company like that. Can you introduce me to Him?" And I said, "Well, why don't we wait a week? And we'll do it then." But that's what you're doing. Boy, it's that reliable, that network.
Your Resume Is Unreliable
Your resume is unreliable. It's Philippians chapter 3, verses 3 through 4. We talked about it when we studied the book of Philippians. Paul lists all of His qualifications. Now, He's talking about salvation here. And He said, "I, more than anybody, have the right to put confidence in the flesh." But that is but dung. So you can be all skilled up. You can have all these accomplishments. But they're not hiring those accomplishments anymore. You can have all this resume of all these things you did and all this achieved. But they don't do that anymore.
I tell you, I was talking to someone last week. If I had kids growing up, and I have grandkids, but they're a little young, I would get, and I never thought I'd say this until I recently went through the book, is the old Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People. I would sit down with these high school kids. And I would make every kid, it would be a small group, read a chapter a week. Because what it's teaching these kids are interpersonal relationship skills. I used to tell my kids would go, "Dad, I don't know how it's so competitive." I said, "If you can smile and give the correct change, you're in the top 5%. It's not that tough." Those are those skills. But things are changing so fast, right? Even if you're in software, your software is the old software.
Your Position Can't Be Counted On
The last thing, way beyond even resume, your position can't be counted on. I ask this, I'm not looking for an answer. I just ask you to think about it. Have you ever been fired? Because I have.
I was at work at Motorola, which is just a totally dysfunctional company as it relates sales and engineering. This is a great story. I got hired there, and the guy goes, "You know, we don't know where to put you, but I see you're from Iowa. We're going to put you in agribusiness." So that was all the cotton. I said, "I'm a city boy. I'm from Davenport." He said, "No, agribusiness." So I had this southeast valley, and if you go out there, all those roads, they're all named after families.
Well, the first guy I ever called was Dwayne Dobson. So I called and got right through to Him. I said, "Dwayne, my name's Tom Schrader. I'm the new Motorola guy in town, and I know you use a lot of our stuff. We got some things that might be interesting to you. Just check up stuff. I'd love to get together. How about Monday for breakfast? Why don't we meet?" He said, "That's perfect." He said, "Do you know where the ranch house is?" And I said, "I don't," and He gives me the direction. And He said, "Why don't we meet there four o'clock Monday morning? We all meet at four o'clock." And I said, "Dwayne, why don't we meet at eight for lunch?" And He said, which I thought was pretty clever, He said, "We can do whatever you want to do." And I said, "No, it might be good for me."
So I go out there at four, and I get in this agribusiness thing, and it just worked. It was a good business, because there's a lot of that stuff. These old guys, crusty old birds, and I love to sit with them, and I love to tell stories, and they had money to buy stuff. So they said, "We're going to promote you. We want to make you a manager." And you're always suspicious of that, because that means more work, less money, always. And I said, "OK, I might do that. It would look good. I've never amounted to much. This might be helpful. But we're going to send you to Colorado." And I said, "Uh-oh." But I have pictures of Colorado. You know, I see Vail and all this. I said, "Perfect, I guess." And He said, "Pueblo, Colorado." Now, if you've ever been to Tucson, that's Pueblo, OK? Pueblo might be a little nicer. They got the mill there in town.
The Pueblo Disaster
Well, I go up there. This is, you can't even make, this is like a book. The guy who was the salesman before me that they fired, when they went to get His company car, He had it on blocks. He'd stripped it for parts. So this thing was in total disarray. I came from this region down here that was the number one region in the country, anal retentive. I mean, we did everything by the book. I mean, I'd never seen anything. We had guys operating equipment all over with no license. We were so far out of compliance, it wasn't funny. I had three sales guys.
None of them were making it. I got there in January, and for the first time in my life, I worked and worked and worked really hard. God used me to make those three guys productive. I hired four more guys. But Motorola would always call the last week in December—that was always a black week.
I got a call from El Segundo, which I knew I'd get. They said, "We got to get rid of two guys." I said, "Well, I don't have two guys. I got one guy who, if you were patient, he can make it. But I got one guy." They said, "That's fine. Then we got two." I said, "No, I got one guy." And they said, "No, you."
You know how you always hear what's inside a guy? To this day, I don't know what happened to me. But I'm telling you, before that phone rang, if you would have said, "Tell me about your job," I would have said I thought it was good coming in here. I'm rock solid. But those things happen. It could have been economic—who knows? I don't know why. It doesn't even matter why. They didn't ask me why, and all they seemed concerned about was getting the company car back. That's all it was.
Maintain Confidence: An Alternative Approach
Well, in the midst of this, here's an alternative approach. Look at that on your outline. Notice we begin all five of those with the phrase "maintain confidence." There are going to be attacks, and I'll give you some verses here you can work your way through.
There's going to be attacks. Psalm 27:3: "Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear. Though war break out against me, even then I will be confident."
When God saved me, it was a radical change and fairly visible in an office that at the time—its demeanor in that office has changed—but at the time was fairly, in terms of action, aggressively pagan, I would say. I had one guy, because different guys would take different shots. I had one guy one time say, "You know, if you were stronger, you wouldn't need this faith. It's just a crutch."
I remember hearing that and I went home. Here's what Webster says a crutch is: "a support typically fitting under the armpit for use by the disabled in walking." I realized that though he meant it as a criticism, in fact, my faith is a crutch. It is what I lean on, and I am disabled in walking.
Here you go—maintain that confidence not just in the midst of the attacks, but in the midst of deficiencies. Psalm 33:17: "A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save." You can look at all these things we talked about, but in and of themselves, they don't provide you confidence.
Confidence Despite Disasters
Confidence despite disasters. Proverbs 3:25-26: "Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared."
I look around and I see that's what makes it kind of impending—there's this sense of doom. When my girls were small, they would, like yours, periodically have bad dreams and almost always they would come down for some sort of comfort. If it was at night, I'd be in bed and those were okay—we'd cuddle up. But oftentimes I'd be studying, and if I was studying, I'd be in my studying position, which means in my chair, leaned back, my feet on the table.
The girls would come and they'd be a little shaky and a little teary, and I would say, "Well, come on." They'd kind of curl up on my lap and I would let them settle down. I'd say, "What's wrong, honey?" They would say, "I had this dream." I always said two things to them. I always said, "Everything's going to be all right," and then I'd let them sit for a while. I would say, "You know what? You're the perfect Hugginsite. You are the perfect Hugginsite."
My daughter Haley sent me a text a few months ago. One of the kids was having a little bit of a traumatic situation and she was holding him. She said, "I understand now what you meant when you said 'the perfect Hugginsite.'" Sometimes you just need to—and I understand it's figurative—you need to climb up on God's lap and let Him put His arms around you. You need to hear Him say, "Everything's going to be okay and you're the perfect Hugginsite." No matter what these disasters and shortages are.
Trusting Despite Overwhelming Odds
Jeremiah 17:7: "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes."
The last one—you'll maintain confidence despite overwhelming odds. Sometimes when you can't even figure out how you're going to get through it. "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." It's a picture of protection.
They lost last night in what would be their last game. Well, Saturday they had a game. It was on the other diamond. On the other diamond there's only one tree, and everybody is crowded under this one tree. It's not a good environment in a game like that because you got parents and they're yelling. The more they yell on their side, the more I yell on my side. I watched most of the game standing out by the fence.
But Sandy found this thing—I don't know what it is. It's like rubber, but you just run water on it and then you put it on. I don't know how this happens—it gets colder. I don't know how this happened. I don't know what this thing is. But I got this on and I'm surviving. But there's nothing like the shade of that tree. There's nothing like the feeling of the shadow of the Almighty.
The Unshakeable Life
Well, you can read the last seven. I'll go through them real quick and I don't think they need much comment. The scripture I would use for this is Psalm 112:1-9: "Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in His commands. Surely he will never be shaken."
Now, let me get this fear and shaken stuff. If you go in and you have an x-ray and the doctor calls and said...
Listen, I want to go through your test results, Mr. Schroeder. We know at that point it's not that personal care, I hope, just a forerunner of Obamacare. But Mr. Schroeder, I want to go through this. I'll go, fine. I'll go, no, you need to come in. And then he comes in and he sets you down and he said, all right, here's the picture. These are never words you want to hear either. Here's the picture of a normal lung. My name's on this one down here. Oh yeah, here's you.
I'm not saying that if you get that, you don't have that flinch. But I'm saying when it settles in, there's this inexplicable peace that comes from knowing this. You recognize the real authority in your life, which is the word of God, and you follow His directives, and you demonstrate godly character. You exhibit generosity. By generosity here, I don't mean dough. I mean just a sensitivity to people around you. And you maintain this idea of integrity.
The Commodity of Trust
The commodity that we trade on is trust. Any relationship trades in the commodity of trust. I had it, I made a list when, it sounds really stupid, but when I was single, I made a list and it was, because I told Sarah, I said, I think I'm going to go out on a date. And she said, what would you look for in a girl? So I made a list.
Godly girl, practical godliness, respects and understands how my girls would feel, an appropriate desire to reach out to the girl to be their sister and friend, not their mom, strong but feminine. This next one might be a little male-oriented. Attractive and committed to working on maintaining her attractiveness. Sense of humor, ability to laugh, gets what better or worse means, ferociously protects me, my reputation, and the privacy of our relationship. I had an age thing in here too, which is stupid maybe, but it was kind of important.
Sandy is every one of these things, it's weird. She's every one of these things. And we've reached a point, at least on my end, I'm always so fragile in talking about this because I keep saying, as I'm talking about it, she's home with the movers, leaving maybe, I don't know. Maybe I'm missing it. But we've reached a point where the trust is so deep, I trust her, so I find myself saying stuff to her that I would never say to anybody else. That's that trust.
The trust you have for the other person is going to determine the depth of the relationship you can have with that person, whether it's a friend, whether it's a management laborer, and when that trust is broken, it's not to say you can't get it back, but that's all you have as a commodity of exchange. So we're building a church and doing some fundraising and talking about all sorts of stuff. I said, here's the reality. They're going to give money to people they trust and they're going to trust them to make the best decision with it.
God's Absolute Trustworthiness
Here's the deal and we're done. God is trustworthy. You can trust Him with everything. You can trust Him with your resources. You can trust Him with your health. You can trust Him with everything. So I continue to demonstrate this integrity. He's trustworthy. I can rely on Him.
So in the midst of these conversations that we have with others, if you really want to get down and dirty in conversations and in depth, it's to take a look at this. From the basis here, not of conventional wisdom, I'm not saying don't do those five things. I'm just saying you can't trust them like you can trust Christ.
Pick up right there next week. Father, thank You for the awesome and amazing truth. Drill it deep in our hearts. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.