Genesis 6 - Consistency Maintaining the Mundane
Tom Shrader begins a six-part series on living exceptionally in an average world by examining the necessity of perseverance in mundane circumstances. Using Noah's 120-year ark-building project from Genesis 6 as the primary example, he demonstrates how God uses ordinary people who develop the character trait of perseverance through tribulation and delayed gratification. Shrader emphasizes that most of life is lived in the valley between mountaintop experiences, requiring consistency and faithfulness in small, daily obedience rather than spectacular achievements.
“We have all a few moments in life of hard, glorious running, but we have days and years of walking in the uneventful discharge of small duties.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to be Exceptional in an Average World
Recorded: March 10, 2011
Duration: 38 min
Themes: perseverance, consistency, faithfulness, obedience, character, endurance, patience, steadfastness, feeling discouraged, lacking motivation, dealing with routine, seeking purpose, parent, employee, middle aged, long term commitment
Scripture: Genesis 6:9-22, Matthew 5:16, Romans 5:1-3, James 1, Ephesians 6:10-18, 2 Thessalonians 1:4, 1 Peter 3:20
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual formation, biblical character, christian maturity, discipleship, stewardship, covenant faithfulness, divine calling
Full Transcript
We are going to start a new series today and let me give you some background. This is one of those that's going to take a little bit of explanation. We recycle content about every five years, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later. You can go online and see all the studies we've done, and periodically we drop in something new. This isn't that. We first developed this study in 1989.
The title of this series is "How to Be Exceptional in an Average World," and we're going to spend six weeks in it. There are twelve topics total, and I'm not sure how this happened or why I did it, but the last two times I've done this, I've covered six topics. Here's where we're going. Starting next week, we'll look at personal values and professional ethics. Decision making. Finding stability amidst changing circumstances - that might be good. How to motivate your job performance. And your approach to conflict resolution, which offers an option other than just denial.
The Challenge of Ordinariness
Here's today's topic. I'm telling you this up front - I love this session, but you won't. I really get into it, but you're accustomed to lots of fun, wit, and humor. None of that is in here today. Here's the title, and even the title is a downer: "Consistency in the Midst of the Mundane." What we're going to talk about is ordinariness, the mundane.
This is something that became very clear to me. I am not really intelligent. I'm smart, I'm smarter than most of you, but I'm not very intelligent. Most of you are smarter than I am, but I'm curious about some things, and I do a very good job of linking things together, getting out the white noise, and getting to the issue. That's what I do really well.
Early on in my life, I discovered that we spend most of our time living in the valley - either in the valley or ascending to or descending from mountaintop experiences. We have this desire to have these exhilarating moments, and they are just that - exhilarating moments. But you don't live there.
Life in the Valley
Even if you're an NFL player, you spend the vast majority of your time all year long getting ready for game day. I took the boys to a spring training game the other day, and the whole plan was to stay for an inning, which is about all the baseball anybody needs. But we got there two hours early to watch batting practice. I love to go out and try to figure out how the pitchers - the guys that hit .700 in Little League, batted .500 in high school - can't bunt. That drives me crazy.
So we went down, and I took the boys down and said, "Okay boys, this is a bunt. You won't see this very often, but if you can do it, it's going to win you games." We watched them bunt, watched them field. You watch these guys go through these drills to try to get to the game.
Here's the quote I'll start with and end with. It's from Andrew McLaren, a Scottish theologian. He said, "We have all a few moments in life of hard, glorious running, but we have days and years of walking in the uneventful discharge of small duties." That's where we live. I get the mountaintop, but life's lived down here. That's why, frankly, some of us have to supplement our life with mountaintops. We have to live through other people's achievements or struggles or battles. We're slugging it out down here in a place called the mundane.
The Distortion of Reality
The whole question is: does life imitate art or does art imitate life? Well, if I turned on TV and art was imitating life, I'd see a fat guy in his shorts looking back at me. Here's the deal - they're showing us and molding us and moving our thought process.
There was a story last night about an anti-smoking group talking about a new movie. They said sixty times in the course of this movie, somebody takes a puff of a cigarette. Here's what they said: "This will cause thousands and thousands of teens to smoke." Now, if that's true - and I'll go ahead and say it's true - then how can you tell me I can watch all the violence, all the sex, and all the other stuff, and it not affect me? There's a total disconnect in the public arena, it seems to me.
I watch TV and we see problems presented and solved in a thirty-minute time span - in reality, twenty-two minutes when you take out ads. We try to look at that and say, "Well, is that really life?" I want to be like Ward Cleaver. You have a job, but you never go to it. That's perfect.
Noah's Mundane Calling
If you have Bibles with you, you can open them to the book of Genesis. When we talk mundane, there's a guy in there who embarks on a project, and to me, this becomes really the cornerstone of what we're going to look at this morning. Genesis chapter six, and his name is Noah.
In the middle of all of this, what I want you to see is that God left you here for a reason. If all God wanted to do was get you to heaven, He would have taken you there at the moment you believed. So He left you here for a reason, for a purpose. I don't know what it is specifically, but I can give it to you in big terms. In big terms, it's to be the salt of the earth and light of the world.
Susan the other day was saying to me - she hasn't been to church this year, maybe once, but she listens to some of my tapes and other things - and she said...
Someone said to me the other day, "I was listening to one of your studies this morning." I said, "Well, that's cool," and she goes, "You gotta get some new material. You gotta get something new. This is the same old stuff." I said, "You know, I like you better when you're sick. I don't need this." I come back to the same thing. That's because, best I can tell, no new material in here.
So here's the point. God left you here for a reason, Matthew 5:16, so that you will be the light of the world. Here's the key now. People will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. So there's supposed to be something unique and different about you, and then they glorify your Father in heaven. We make this point to you all the time. They won't do that unless you tell them to, because if they just see your good works, they're just gonna think you're a nice person who's wired that way.
Living in the Ordinary
So there's a connection, and most of it is not gonna be mountaintop - it's ordinary. We had a guy come into this study one day laughing. I said, "Hey, man, did you hear a joke, see something on TV?" He said, "No. I'm driving down the street, and all of a sudden, I noticed this guy's right on me, and he followed me, and he followed me into the parking lot here. When I pulled in, he pulled in behind me." This is when we were doing the study over in one of the bars. He pulled in right behind me, so I couldn't get out, and he came up, and he started screaming at me, and yelling at me, and cursing at me. He said, "Listen, your car flipped this rock into my windshield, and you're gonna pay for it, insurance, I want it, let's exchange cards."
So he exchanged cards with the guy, business cards, and he sees in the guy's card - you know where this is going - a fish, and then he sees a line on it that says, "Christian drivers." He made the assumption that's because they don't have any accidents. So he said to the guy, "I see here you're a Christian, I'm on my way to a Bible study, do you want to join me?" And he said, the guy got, "Oh, I don't usually talk like this. I don't usually act like this."
Now think about for a second, if it wasn't my friend, think if it was just somebody off the street where you just jumped in his grill, you went down his throat, you ripped him out because he put a rock in your windshield, which I get, that would bother me. And now, you give him this, and then you say to him, "By the way, what are you doing on April 24th? You want to go to this church with me for Easter?" See the disconnect there? It's not these big things. We tend to think big things, big projects, worldwide, giant stuff. And I'm not saying don't think about it. I'm just saying that's not where we live.
The Character Trait of Perseverance
So there's a character trait that you need to develop. It's a character trait that is gonna be essential for living in the mundane, and it's called perseverance. Here's the definition: The act of continuing a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. The act of continuing a course of action in spite of the difficulty or opposition. In other words, what do you do when the newness wears off? What do you do now when you're living in the valley?
The concert pianist Paderewski said this: "Before I was a genius, I was a drudge." Years ago, I went into church one Sunday morning, pianist played, it was unbelievable. Monday, I happened to be in there, and I hear the piano, and I go in, and she's there. So I sit down, I thought, "I'm gonna get a private concert." And she's playing, and I'm going, "That is really..." I can't identify that. Oh, it's scales. Then I realized that she's playing scales.
So after about 15 minutes, I went up and I said, "Listen, I'm in the back, I've got something I can do, but I'd love to hear you play. I hear you're playing scales, and I just figure that's the equivalent of stretching before the game. How long will you be playing those?" And she said, "Two, three hours." I said, "Wow, you play scales two or three hours every Monday morning?" And she said, "No, every morning." And then all of a sudden, I realized, I don't want to be a great pianist. I don't want to do that. That's boring. That's what I'm saying.
Opposition and Perseverance
So this idea of perseverance - staying with it when the newness wears off. Now, listen to the definition one more time: An act of continuing a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. There's a connection here between perseverance and opposition. I'm gonna read you three passages of scripture and setting this up, and then we'll get into our discussion.
Romans chapter five. Romans chapter five, verse one, Paul's talking about we've been justified by faith. We have peace with God. He talks about all these wonderful things tucked in the middle, verse three. "And not only this, but we also exalt in our tribulation." Here's the key word for me: "knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance."
So here's what he's saying. Tribulation, suffering, hardship, you fill it in. I can tell you my story. That doesn't matter. You put your own story in there because everybody in this room has lived long enough to have those stories of tribulation, hardship, difficulty, whatever they are. Those things will build you up.
The Testing of Faith
And I would go right to James chapter one: "Consider it all joy, count it all joy when you encounter various difficulties or trials because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance." So testing, trials, tribulation, spiritual aerobics. That's what will push you.
Here's Paul, and I never saw this until the last time I was going through this. Here's Paul at the end of the book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter six: "Finally be strong in the Lord and strengthen in His might." And then he says this: "Put on the full armor of God." Some of you that's new, others of you you've been through it before and you do what I do. You read that "full armor of God" and then it's like you get to the end...
it's like sincerely yours. Well, let me read you the sincerely yours part. It's Ephesians 6:18: "With all prayer and petition at all times in the spirit with this in view, be on the alert." And the implication here is out of all of these trials, struggles, difficulties, battles, warfare, be on the alert, persevere. There it is. There's that struggle. Be alert, put on the full armor of God. Battle is there. Persevere.
Second Thessalonians chapter one, verse four. You can go all the way through Paul's writings but He's writing to the church at Thessalonica. He's encouraging them. And He says, "Therefore we speak proudly of you among the churches of your perseverance and your faith. Listen now, in the midst of all your persecution and afflictions with which you endure."
So here's the premise. We live most of life in the mundane, in the ordinariness and you will quit unless you develop the trait of perseverance. It's continuing in the midst of the ordinariness, in the midst of the mundane, in the midst of the suffering, in the midst of the opposition.
Noah's Character and God's Use of Average People
Now, when we get to Noah, we see an interesting character trait. Chapter six, verse nine: "This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. He walked with God, He had three sons and then He lists them, Shem, Ham and Japheth." Noah was blameless. That's not to say he's perfect. It's to say he was in right relationship with God through the remedies that God had given them. When he sinned, he sacrificed. When he sinned, he repented. All of those things.
There is a character trait. God's looking for men, women, who will submit to Him, who will obey Him and who will then be used by Him in significant ways. That doesn't necessarily mean big.
So I spend a lot of time trying to explain to people and this group looks like you can see this. You're essentially average. That's by definition, you have to be. None of you in here, I don't think, are going to find the cure to cancer. You're not going to do anything even recognizable. Although some of you have done recognizable things, it's amazing no one really cares, do they? No, they just don't care.
I'm telling you, this is very liberating. Nobody really cares and I'll be real honest with you: most of your friends would rather see you fail than succeed. That's just flat true. But most of you are average. You're not going to do anything spectacular. Let me finish the sentence. In the world's view, you're not. But you can do significant things because God uses ordinary average people who are willing to obey Him and submit to Him and follow His plan and His path even when we sin to confess it and to come back to Him.
Delayed Gratification in a Instant-Results Culture
To develop this perseverance and living in the mundane demands, this is key now, being motivated by delayed gratification.
So I'm talking to an insurance guy yesterday and he's talking about hail damage. And he said, "This is amazing. Because," he said, "you got all these guys now running around going, you got hail damage. And," he said, "we get our adjusters out there. There's no hail damage. Everybody's watching hail damage." And he said, "It's really killing me. I'm watching my business and I'm watching these people let their homes go and it's not because they couldn't do it. They're forfeiting on the second loan, the third loan, the loan they took to do the thing."
Here was my dad. Graduated on a Sunday in June in 1948 from St. Ambrose College. That's when they graduated. Graduation, it was Sunday. My mom was telling me when I was home a couple times ago that a lot of people got married on Mondays, which I didn't realize. So I got married on a Monday.
They were in Davenport, Iowa. They went to Pikes Peak, took the train, didn't have a car. My mom wanted to see the mountain. My dad wanted to see the room because they're on their honeymoon. I mean, I just add that. I don't know that it's true. I'm just, I know my dad and I know my mom. I'm just guessing. They did whatever they're going to do. He probably tried to get a room with a view of the mountain. Here, look at the mountain.
They came back the following Sunday. The following Monday, he started work at Davenport Bank and Trust Company, 1948, and worked there until 1990. And when he was there, he was not a long timer there. A few years ago, I played golf with a guy that started at the bank there in 1939. When my dad retired, the guy who started the bank was still working. He started in 1929. Well, perseverance. We don't do that anymore.
The Modern Search for Better Deals
We're looking for the latest deal. Now, it's changing now. It's interesting how the market plays. But if you can rewind four, five, six years, "I need a new deal. Well, I'm moving over here. What's over here? What do you got? What's the compensation?"
I have a friend who I went to high school with, a girl, who I reconnected with a few years ago. That always sounds dirty, but it's not. I didn't go to our class reunion. I got the information. I saw that she's a bank president here in Phoenix. And so we had coffee and started talking, and she's pretty clever.
In the midst of all the strategic default stuff, there was an article in the paper and it was talking about her, and she said, "I was one day getting my nails done, and the 25, 26-year-old girl who was doing my nails was telling me they were buying their third house. And," she said, "she went home and made the comment to her husband, either she's really good at nails or I'm a really dumb banker, but we don't have three houses."
All that stuff. Wasn't it? Weren't you a jerk? You're a jerk if you're not out buying rental property, all the stuff. Love it. "What are you doing?" And you're talking about, "Well, what kind of return are you getting, 7%?" "We're getting 20, 30, 40%."
When we bought our last house, we moved in, when I say our last house, we lived in one for 23 years.
And then moved into this. I called it the body bag house, remember, when we moved in. We're going to die here. We were in there two years, and somebody knocked on the door, and they said, "Well, are you willing to sell?" And I said, "I'm not a seller."
And they said, "We think we can get you this," which was almost 80% more than we paid for it. I said to Susan, because we're not wired this way—we stay and do the same thing—I said, "Susan, let me just tell you what we ought to do. We're not going to do it. We ought to sell this dog right now, because we can buy it back in two years, because this is a giant Ponzi scheme. Everybody's betting on the come. Somebody's got to lose."
Now that's how we like it. Here's what we don't like: steady plotting, slow, easy, long-term grind. No one's a guy with character.
Getting the Big Picture
Here's the next thing you need to do. You got to get the big picture. Now the whole earth—it's verse 11, Genesis 6—"Now the whole earth was corrupt in God's sight and full of violence. God saw how corrupt the whole earth had become, for all the people on the earth had been corrupted in their own ways. And God said to Noah, 'I'm going to put an end to the people. I'm going to fill the earth with violence because of them, and I'm surely going to destroy both them and you.'"
Noah would have never, I don't think on his own, figured that out. It's getting this big picture. Let me tell you where you will not get the big picture. You'll not get the big picture at ASU. You'll not get the big picture at Wharton. You'll not get the big picture at the annual stockholders' meeting.
You'll not get the big picture through psychology. You're not going to get the big picture through economics. You're not going to get the big picture through the Tea Party, through Hannity or Combs. They're not going to give you the big picture. Here's where you're going to get the big picture: at one place, right here, to see things in perspective and see them as they are.
Understanding God's Role vs. Our Role
And what God says is that the results are His responsibility. The process is ours. He's looking for obedience and then He'll figure out how big your net is. He'll figure out what He does with that obedience.
It's counterintuitive. We want, especially in the world we live in, we want what we want now. Fast food. So when I go—I tell the story all the time—I'm essentially McDonald's free for the last few years. When I go to McDonald's, here's what I would do: never go through the drive-in. That's a curse, because the guy ahead of you, you don't know what they're going to order.
You go in and you look and here's what I'll do. I'll say, "Okay, I'll have one of the blue"—that's a fish—"and one of those." And they'll go, "All right." And I say, "No, no, no, don't bring it up. Put it in the bag now. Because somebody's going to order that and I learned that long ago, and that fish will be gone." Whatever it is. I don't know. I don't formulate what I want at McDonald's. I judge based on what I can see. Because I go to McDonald's for fast—incidentally, it's food. I want fast food.
The Challenge of Process Over Results
So our whole life is based on that. I want all the results, but I don't want any of the process. So my daughter Haley right now—Sarah's in the midst of it, both of them—but Haley, they have a baby. So they've got the baby now. They've got Lucy. Lucy's seven weeks old.
There are no strokes in this. The most difficult job in the world is having a kid and being really fully devoted to the kid. Because you get nothing back. All they do is take in and let out and let you know they're miserable in between. That's all they do. There's nothing. You got to create a moment.
Haley said the other day, "Oh, dad, she's smiling." She's got gas. She can only see three feet. She can't even see you. She just doesn't feel good. So I've got to do this. Get this down.
Pursuing Delayed Gratification
Now we're going to get to the punchline here. You have to pursue delayed gratification. Noah gets this assignment. God says, and it's in Genesis six, verse 14 through 17: "So I want you to make an ark of cypress wood and make rooms in it. Coat it with pitch. Here's how you build it: 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feet high. Make it a roof and finish the ark within 18 inches of the roof."
Now think about that. He's saying, "Here's the roof up here and bring it to—here's the roof. I want you to bring it up to here." Why is He doing that? A little ventilation. We're going to have a little odor problem here because we're going to bring two buffalo, two cows, two chickens. We're going to bring them onto this thing and I'm going to bring floodwaters that'll destroy the earth.
Noah had an assignment, an assignment to complete.
Finding Your Purpose
Here you go. This is important. You need to figure out why God put you here. Now I can't answer that for you. Like I said, I can give you a big bucket of questions, but it has to do with His sovereignty. So God's sovereign. Here you go.
You were born at this time in history. You weren't born in 1865. You were born in this place. So self-made man, self-made woman, pulled myself up by my own bootstraps—think about it. Even God provided that. You weren't born in Bangladesh. I could take any of you, put you in Bangladesh and you'd be screwed. And you're the biggest, brightest, sharpest that we have. You're born here.
This place, this time. Why do you live in that neighborhood? Why did that person come across your path? Why do you get coffee there? Why did that guy sit next to you? God's using you to touch people. So I need to begin to figure out—and it's okay to dream big, but live small. It's okay to have those big dreams, but you're living in this day. You're working toward it.
The Demand for Discipline and Perseverance
And this demands that you're going to have to be disciplined and you're going to have to persevere. Let me tell you something about Noah that some of you don't know. God says, "Noah, build an ark," and Noah builds the ark. Between the time God said "build the ark" and Noah finished the ark—
It was how long? One hundred and twenty years. So somehow there was a government agency involved in this somewhere. Probably ran out of financing about day one when Noah was working the construction project.
Now I want to paint this picture. Noah builds an ark in the middle of the desert at a time when some scholars think it had not yet rained. So if I say build a boat, you at least think, okay, I've got to get to Lake Pleasant. I think boat, I think I'm in Mission Bay or I'm in San Francisco. No, he's building an ark in Gila Bend for a hundred and twenty years, where people would go, "Flood? It hasn't even rained."
Think of Noah. Put yourself in that spot. Think of Noah in the midst of that. Think of the people. Because Noah's going, "Hey, God's going to bring a flood." Really? We've been at this ten years. No flood. No clouds. Pretty soon he becomes the laughing stock. That would be my speculation.
Word spreads. Because entertainment's tough. They didn't have cable. They didn't have any of these things. So what would they do for fun? They planned family reunions around going to watch Noah build the ark. And they would go. And they'd mock him. And they'd say, "Noah, what are you doing? You're building the ark in the middle of nowhere."
The Discouraging Reality of Faithfulness
Here's the thing. So a hundred and twenty years is one thing. Here's the second thing that to me is very discouraging. When Noah finally gets on the ark, he doesn't have one more person than he started with. A hundred and twenty years of going, "Flood's coming. God's going to destroy the earth." Really? No response.
Here's what God says: "I will establish my covenant with you. And you will enter the ark. And you and your sons and your wife. You will enter the ark." And Noah does this.
Living in the Big Picture
So here you go. I'm taking this to a close. You need to know, following this, you need to know the big picture. What God has for you, where you fit in this picture, the specs for your life, like He gave him the specs for the ark, what does God expect for you? What's God's will for your life?
We were in a discussion yesterday. It may be time to—well, we'll do that when we get to decision making. Wait a minute, is that the third week? Yeah, you'll want to be here the third week for sure, because we'll talk about decision making and the will of God. What's God's will for your life? God wants you to have this big picture, to embark on this, but you're going to do it living in the mundane.
Even at church, we had a thing the other night where we had a bunch of people in from church, and we were just sharing what God's doing, what's going on, and one guy got up. He's a business guy in town, very successful. For 19 years, they've been teaching kindergarten. Talk about flying under the radar screen.
I don't want to be a dream killer. I think I've always nurtured dreams. All I'm saying is make those dreams realistic and understand you don't live on the mountaintop. You'll want to be the concert pianist. I'm asking, are you willing to play scales three hours a day for 20 years?
God's Patient Work
What was God doing, by the way, while Noah was building the ark? First Peter chapter three, verse 20: "Long ago, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah." We get to that Old Testament God. We saw it—we just finished a study in Jonah. The God of the Old Testament is a gracious, compassionate, loving God. God sends Noah with a message to the world, "I'm going to destroy the world," and God waits 120 years. How long did you want Him to wait, 121 years? 125 years?
It's like in our life. We need to understand there's a seriousness about it. Susan and I went to the doctor yesterday, then we came home and got something to eat, and then came home, and we're just watching. And you're watching the news, and you're seeing all of these things on the news. What's Gaddafi doing? The hearings that start today, is it really something serious? Is it something make-believe? Does it warrant this? All of this stuff.
In the midst of this, we need to see that God is at work, where do I fit, and call things what God calls them.
Calling Things What They Really Are
So we had a guy came into the study. He said, "I'd love to talk to you." I said, "Okay." And he said, "I slipped up." I said, "You fell coming in the building?" He said, "No, no, no, no, I slipped up." And I said, "Okay, what does that mean?" And he said, "I have this ongoing affair with my secretary."
Whatever, I mean, that stuff happens, I get it. Here's what I want you to see. That's not a slip-up. That takes time. You have to nurture her, you have to manipulate her, you have to woo her. You have to figure out how you can do that without somebody else catching you. You have to find the place to go repeatedly. You have to organize that place. You have to get enough cash out of your system so it doesn't show up on a credit card, or it's not a default somewhere else. It takes a lot of effort. If this guy worked that hard at business, he'd be world-class.
It takes a lot of effort to pull this off. So don't say, "I slipped up." I sinned. Everybody does. I'm just saying, God's given us a provision where we acknowledge that, and He strengthens us in the middle of it, and I persevere. I walk a long way in the same direction. Obedience in the same direction.
The Resolution: Hanging in There
So the resolution is, I'm going to hang in there. Even though a lot of what I do, at least on the surface, will be insignificant. Though it may contribute to what I want to do, on the other hand, it might not either.
I'll use this, and I'm not a perfect illustration here, but when Susan and I got married, we said, "better, worse, rich or poor, sickness, health, till death do us part." Rarely—I was going to say never—rarely do the people saying that understand what they're saying. Because what they think is, "better, health, wealth." So many of the reasons for which I married Susan—I'm a very superficial person. I don't even have a desire to go deep. I mean, it's not even of interest.
So when I saw Susan, I was radically in what I would say was love, but it was lust. The minute I saw her, she fit my mold. She was about a size two. This is what I like, this is good. And then I pursued her, stalked her. She rejected me, you know the story. She rejected me over and over again, but finally she married me.
I remember I thought I'd be the happiest guy in the world, but then I realized I was asking her to be God. Well, that was in 1978. Almost all the things that motivated me towards Susan in 1978 aren't realities today. Now, I gotta tell you, it's hard. We've been at it six and a half years in this thing. And other than a period of about three or four months, I had done pretty well with it. But the only reason is God is good. It's a matter of perseverance in the midst of the mundane, in the midst of the ordinariness of life.
The Ministry of Children
Let me mention child rearing and then we'll go. It is amazing to me to watch our girls as we go through this. When we go to the doctor's office, so we go again on April 4th. So when we go, we'll go as a team. There'll be all the family there. And when we go, there'll be Susan who will get some of what we talk about. I'll be pretty dialed in, but the girls will get it. And one of those is an oncology nurse and the other is nuke med.
It's amazing to me to watch the girls minister to their mom. After years of nurturing and changing diapers and telling them everything will be okay and boys are stupid and all the stuff that we had to work our way through, at the end of the day, I would say, if you're looking for payback, which by the way, if you do it for payback, you really are screwed there. But at the end of the day, those girls now minister to their mom. If when we started, we said, what would we love? We would love to raise godly girls, which they are. And if some way they could minister to people, that would be great. We just never thought it would be their mom.
The Mundane Reality of Life
Consistency in the midst of the mundane. The majority of stuff, if you pull up, I guarantee you this is true. If you pull up your calendar for next week, you're going to see two, three, four, five things on there. And you're going to go, this is a really big meeting. And a year from now, you won't even remember what the heck you met about. A year ago, you were calling your friends, pray for me, pray for this, pray for this. And today you go, I don't know, I got a new thing.
I'm saying to you, in the midst of life, it's slugging it out day to day to day to day. Steady plotting, developing perseverance, character that flows out of tribulation and suffering. Like I said at the beginning, I know that's not a big old cheery deal, but that's a lot more helpful than just blowing smoke at you about how great you are and how good life is.
Next week, we're going to talk about, you can skip this one, ethics.
Let's pray. Father, help us take this and apply it to our heart and our life. God, we love you. We love you for one reason, because You first loved us. Thanks for loving us. We worship You and praise You in Christ's name, amen.