Don't Lose Heart
Tom Shrader concludes his 11-week series by addressing the final key to staying spiritually focused: thirsting for daily renewal. Drawing from 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, he teaches that while the outer man decays, the inner man can be renewed day by day through God's power. He emphasizes gaining eternal perspective on present sufferings, viewing them as momentary light affliction compared to the eternal weight of glory that awaits believers in Christ.
“Most Christians should be so heavenly minded that we become of earthly value.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2012)
Recorded: 2012
Duration: 39 min
Themes: perseverance, hope, renewal, suffering, endurance, perspective, salvation, faith, feeling discouraged, facing trials, new believer, struggling with doubt, seeking purpose, experiencing hardship, needing encouragement, questioning faith
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 2 Corinthians 4:7, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 5:19-20, Romans 5:9, 2 Corinthians 11:24-28, Hebrews 9:27
Theological Themes: sanctification, eternal glory, spiritual renewal, biblical christianity, inner man, outer man, sin nature, redemption
Full Transcript
Today is the final week, week 11 of an 11-week series titled, How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World. The basis of this is not so much the morality of the world, though that plays into it, but just in a world that loses its compass. How do I stay focused?
If we go all the way back to week 1, we started with the assumption of this series is you're a Christian, even though I'm confident that there are some people who are listening here on Wednesday morning and Thursday noon who aren't. So I thought to kind of close this down, I want to go back and make sure we're clear about that whole idea of a Christian and what it means.
I had a conversation a couple weeks ago, not unique at all, I had the conversation kind of a million times it feels like, with a guy and we're talking back and forth and he's talking about a Christian and as a Christian this is what he does and I said to him, are you a Christian? He said yes and then he started a convoluted answer that was based entirely on what he did. So we had an opportunity to sit and explain I'm a Christian based on what I believe, which ultimately affects how I behave.
We talk all the time, act like a Christian, feed the hungry, well you have secular humanists to feed the hungry, you have Buddhists to care and love for each other. What makes us Christians is what we believe. When he answered the question I laughed, he said, what are you laughing at? I said no, no, it doesn't matter, nothing. But it always makes me think of, this is my favorite of all time, when I said to a guy, are you a Christian? And his answer was, not in the biblical sense. And that's my favorite all-time answer. But that's where the world is, so that's why we back off and talk a lot, if I'm conscious about it, we talk a lot about biblical Christianity, what it truly means to be a follower of Christ.
What It Means to Be a Christian
Here's the phrase that we use as we want to touch on this. By the way, we'll talk more about this next week, we have a one-off next week. Years ago in Life magazine, always around Christmas and Easter, they do some sort of religious story. They did one year, who was Jesus? So that's what we're going to talk about next week.
But here's what we say, to be a Christian is to be saved from our sin. So we say this, we're saved by God, from God, for God. So I'm saved by God. I come into the world, I'm a sinner. Tonight at five o'clock, I will be at Baseline and McClintock at the Peter Piper Pizza celebrating a seven-year-old party. It will be mass chaos. The only people in the whole restaurant under control will be our table. And it will be chaos. The sinfulness of man is evident all around you in these little three-year-olds and four-year-olds as they fight over tokens and they do all these things.
We come into the world a sinner by nature and then a sinner by our action. And that sin, the Bible tells us, is separated from God. But Jesus came, this is the whole punchline of Christmas. Christmas is not about giving, it's about receiving. Jesus comes into the world, He's born for a specific purpose, to save His people from their sin.
He lives a sinless life which make His sacrifice acceptable. He dies on the cross and then rises from the dead. We're saved by that action. If we believe in that, not based on anything else that we do, if we believe in that, put our faith and trust in Him for our salvation, we are saved by God, but we are saved, we sometimes miss this, from God.
Romans 5:9, "much more than, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Jesus Christ." We're delivered from Him, that He's a God of love and mercy and all these things, but He's a God of judgment too. But now we're saved for a purpose, I'm saved by God, from God, for God, to honor Him, to glorify Him. And so now, and that's the basis of what set up this series, and so now we begin that life, and that's the premise of this series.
The Modern Confusion About Faith
These things that we just talked about are kind of all around us in subtle ways. Years ago there was a guy who came to town to start a new church. I don't remember the name of it, I don't know whatever happened to the church, but he ran an ad in the local paper and this is what it said. He said, I'd like to address those of you who are searching for a spiritual path. As you are well aware, there are so many religions in the world with so many choices, it can be a bit overwhelming to find a church that fits. I want to share with you a few ideas about a new church so you can make an informed decision. Come and see us.
He said, here's three things about it you need to know. Number one, we're not a Christian church in the traditional sense. We do worship Jesus as God, but we don't think that you're going to hell if you don't. We believe all people of all faiths on a path or on a path to heaven. Now here's a keyword phrase, if they live earnestly by what their faith teaches.
So they're going to heaven if they live earnestly based on whatever their faith teaches. It's not what's in your head, it's what's in your heart. So that's a dominant thought, dominant view around us, even worldview. Doesn't matter so much what you believe, but you believe it, you believe it seriously.
Testing the "Earnestness" Theory
So let's just test this guy's theory here. If my faith teaches something and I believe it wholeheartedly and I'm earnest, this guy says I'm going to heaven. So right away, I go right to 9-11. I go right to those guys flying those jets in those buildings. They certainly fit in this category. We couldn't get you to fly a plane in a building for Christ. We can't get you to sit in a building where the air-conditioner is not right, where the seats are. We're never going to get, think about something wild like giving your life to it, it's not going to happen.
If earnestness is all that matters, then these guys are in heaven. I don't expect to
see them in heaven. It's not just the amount of faith you have, it's the object of your faith that you're trusting. So you get on a plane, you can have all the faith in the world, obviously you have faith in it, you got on the plane, you're up in the air. If that engine can't perform the function you're trusting it to do, then the amount of your faith doesn't matter.
So it's important for us to say, listen, it does matter. You believe - just to me I don't get the logic here - but you believe Jesus is God, believe Jesus obviously is who He said He is, and He said I'm the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father but Me, but then you add your own little ingredient to the equation.
Here's the second thing: we believe the Bible is not just a literal document. It's written and given to us because it contains a deeper spiritual sense that is really about each one of us. Each story is a parable that mirrors a spiritual challenge or reality that we face in our path.
So he would be one who would say the Bible may have in it some truth, the problem is, how do I know what's true? And I guarantee you, I don't know this guy and I don't want to throw him under the bus, but it seems comfortable doing it, that if you got to the resurrection you go, oh no, no, that's a picture, it's like spring and coming to life and new beginnings. No, Jesus physically rose from the dead and if I don't believe that, I won't be saved. That's what Romans 8, 9, 10 teaches us.
The Problem with Rejecting God's Judgment
Here's the third thing: God never judges anyone. God is pure and merciful and love itself. We judge ourselves by the choices we make every day in our freedom. We're creating a heaven or a hell within us right now by what we love or pursue in our lives. Hell is a place where selfishness and hate reign and heaven is a place where mutual love and kindness reign. We simply continue living after death in the way we have chosen to live here in this fullness, in this life.
Here's the problem that the Bible teaches, Hebrews 9:27, it's appointed a man once to die and then what? Judgment. We don't want to go around judging. One of the big problems we have today, I think, and it's in all sorts of areas, but you see it in the political stuff right away, is you vilify the other guy and you begin to judge his motives. I don't have the ability to look in somebody's heart, but God tells us all the time to be judging, not just ourselves, but if you have somebody in the church that's living in sin, He gives you a prescription of how you're supposed to approach this.
It's not to run around judging some arbitrary things based on our preference, but there is judgment. This is me now. I think when those hijackers hit that building and died and immediately understand there's a hell, they're separated from God, I think they're very surprised. Osama didn't tell us this. This wasn't what we anticipated. There is judgment.
Now for those of us who are Christians, sometimes we get this screwed up and it has some debilitating effect. This can be freeing for you, an excuse to sin, but your sins will not be judged. Those sins are already judged and paid for by Christ. You are judged based on what you do and rewarded accordingly. I break down after this on how exactly that equation works out.
Staying Straight in a Crooked Church World
But you see this all around you. So when I'm talking about staying straight in a crooked world, I'm talking about staying straight even in a quote church world. So we started by talking about the Bible is the final authority in our life and that we need to make godly decisions and we need to understand as we study this word that it impacts everything we do.
That our relationship with Christ is a deeply personal matter but not a private matter. That it has to integrate into all the areas of our lives. So it affects everything from the kind of husband I am to the kind of customer I am when I'm standing in line. And you just have certain times where you just know it and you reflect it.
So if you're going into the Starbucks at 16th and Bethany. It's the slowest Starbucks on the planet. There may be one in India somewhere that's slower. I don't know. But it's the slowest Starbucks on the planet. Everybody in there is tight. They just remodeled. Maybe this will help. And then you're uptight. It matters how you treat that barista. Begins to infiltrate into everything.
God's Purpose for Your Life
So then we talked about God left you here. Saved by God, from God, for God. He left you here for a reason. He left you here to glorify Him but to be His hands and feet. You're the vehicle that God has chosen to use to reach the world around us. And then just some things in line.
So the whole idea of being content. All of a sudden these things creep in. What an incredible time to talk about contentment. Christmas. Sandy and I, this will be our first Christmas. So we're learning. I'm learning the dance. We passed the first test. Her birthday was October 13th.
So I said, what, you know, she goes, I said, birthdays don't matter to me. If we go out to dinner, that's enough and I have gift cards. This is the perfect date. And I said, that's awesome. Now, I want to hear this again. You don't need anything else. No? I'm going to take you at your word. So on October 14th, if you're upset, you didn't get anything else. This is not my fault. I feel at this point, it would be wasteful to get you something because you don't want anything for your birthday. Is that right?
And so we got there and on her birthday, she was swimming in the morning. So I took a piece of paper and a red pen and wrote happy birthday, Sandy and taped it to the door when she'd come in. And that's what I got her. So yeah, I understand. But I thought, well, this would be a good test all the way around. And it worked out perfect. No problem. So I'm thinking, well, Christmas is going to be really easy until the other day when she said, what do you want for Christmas? I said,
Just as Christmas is that time. What makes it so hard is if we're just like everyone else—if we're walking through the mall and we see something we want, what do we do? We buy it. So you get to Christmas, you got something you're supposed to get, but you got nothing you really need. Everything that you have that you need, you have in Christ. He promised that. So there's a certain level of contentment in our life, though not apathy.
Then we talked about suffering. Here's the bow that ties it all together.
Thirst for Daily Renewal
If you have Bibles, you can open it to 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 16, 17, and 18. Our last point of these 11 is to thirst for daily renewal. "Therefore do not lose heart. Though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. While we do not look at the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen. The things that are seen are temporal, the things that are unseen are eternal."
He begins with that phrase, "don't lose heart." What I love is the realism that Paul approaches this with. Look, just a little bit behind in chapter 4, verse 7, Paul writes these words: "We have this treasure, the gospel, in these earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God, not of ourselves." He said God has given us this gospel to preserve, to preach, to live. He's given it to us in earthen vessels, in clay pots.
We're not something fancy like a vase—we're an ordinary clay pot that they would have around the house, that they would use for a variety of the most menial tasks. God's entrusted that to us. Why? So then when we get to the gospel, it's not going to be about us or the pot, it's going to be about what's in it—it's the gospel.
Now look at Paul's description of his circumstance: "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed." Now he says don't lose heart, and he says don't lose heart in a realistic way, saying I understand that life is really, really, really tough. You're here for a reason.
Our Purpose as Ambassadors
If you flip the page to chapter 5, verse 17 of 2 Corinthians, Paul tells us—familiar passage to many of you—"If anyone is in Christ, a new creature, the old things have passed away, new things have come. Now all these things are from God who reconciles us to Himself through Christ and gave us a ministry of reconciliation." There's my purpose on earth—a ministry of reconciliation. Verse 19: He's given us the word of reconciliation.
Therefore our assignment, verse 20, is we are ambassadors for Christ. We live this, and in this world Jesus promises us that if they persecuted Him, they'll persecute you. There was hardship in His world; there'll be hardship in ours. All of a sudden, in the midst of this, He said I need to know Christ. I need to not lose heart.
The Reality of Decay and Renewal
Don't lose heart. Now let's go back to the passage, but He understands it: "Don't lose heart, though the outer man is decaying, the inner man's being renewed day by day." He said the outer man is decaying—things are rotting away.
In our house, we have a shower that I love. It's not quite big enough, but I love our shower, and it's got these glass tiles. Nice warm water, nice stream. There's a big bathtub—it's a giant bathtub. To my knowledge in the time we've been in it, seven years, nobody's ever taken a bath in it. Then there's the vanity, and there's the sinks, and then at the end of that is a closet.
The closet is a walk-in closet with a sliding door that's a full-length mirror, floor-to-ceiling mirror. So when you walk out of the shower, you see yourself full-length right there. I find myself walking around the bathroom with a towel on, trying to hide myself from myself. Literally, almost every day—I did it this morning—I'll look, and push, and pull. I mean the outer man is decaying.
He said, "Don't lose heart though, the outer man is decaying"—and you can see it, and you can feel it, and it gets tougher and tougher just to even get up in the morning—"but the inner man is being renewed." Here's the second key thing: day by day. God gives us our daily bread. He doesn't give it to us all at once.
Why Daily Dependence Matters
I always thought it strange. Why don't You just give it to me all at once? The reason is pretty simple. If He gave it to me all at once, two things would happen. Number one, I'd blow it. Number two, I'm not sure I'd get back to talk to Him again for a while.
Here's what I've observed about my nature, your nature, human nature. I am much more prone to show my dependence upon God and draw close to Him when there's a spot on the x-ray than when the x-ray is clear. I seem to need Him more when the deal has blown than when the deal is made. He says, come to Me day by day. That's how I'm renewed—day by day. It keeps me dependent upon Him.
We're, by nature, very independent creatures, and we love that sense of independence. We get it, and we applaud it. In our country, where it's super individual, super pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you get this idea over and over again: I can do this. You show the slightest bit of weakness, and it's like everybody around you—you're afraid to do that, not just to be vulnerable, but the consequence of being vulnerable. People will think less of you.
It's the rugged John Wayne tough school. I can do this. I can handle this. All of a sudden, when something comes in our life—and you're going to face it at some point, you're just going to face it, that's what life is—you realize you're at that point where you go, I just can't handle this. I can't do this. I can't control it. I can't even control myself. I come to Him, and I'm renewed by the Holy Spirit, the power of God that comes.
into me day by day, as it's needed, as I ask Him. I'm filled with that Spirit. I'm sustained by that Spirit. It's the power to live in a supernatural way. It's the Spirit that produces that fruit of life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
He said, here's the deal now. We don't lose heart, though the outer man is decaying. Here's our encouragement now: the inner man is being renewed day by day. Now He begins to give us a perspective.
Understanding Momentary Light Affliction
For momentary light affliction. So the idea of light is weightless or trifle. Affliction is intense pressure. So this weightless, intense pressure. Now what does that look like? Well, it can take all sorts of forms.
You're in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Turn back, and Paul gives just a flavor of what he experienced—this weightless, intense pressure. Chapter 11, verse 24: "Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned." That was a form of capital punishment. They actually stoned Paul. They thought he was dead, dragged him out to the edge of town. "Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I've spent in the deep."
Verse 26, notice the word "danger." It's all through here, and at both ends of it. I'll tell you what I mean in a minute. "I've been on frequent journeys, and dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers in the sea, dangers among false brethren." I've been in danger on land, danger on water. Danger from the Jews, danger from the Gentiles. Danger in the city, danger in the country.
"I've been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, and hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure." Now you would appropriately so, and understandably so, read that and end that right there. And you read that and go, "Now let me explain what that is: momentary light affliction." How can you say that?
The Daily Pressure of Ministry
And he's not done yet, because verse 28, and I relate to this, he said, "Apart from such external things, there's the daily pressure on me of the concern for all the churches." He said, apart from all these things, there's the emotional, relational, spiritual component.
I went to Philippi, and the church began, and I don't get a text from them, and I can't Skype with them. Last night, Tyler was in Washington, D.C. on an immigration thing, so it'll be interesting to see what he learned. And last night, before the kids went to bed, Haley was Skyping with Tyler from the airplane. And she said, "This is amazing." I said, "This just astounds me." In the middle of all this, Paul didn't have the ability to Skype to Philippi.
So he said, here are all these things. Now let's go back to the passage, key passage, 4:16-17.
The Eternal Weight of Glory
For this momentary light affliction—all of those things—is doing something for me. It's producing an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. So he's saying, all of this weightless, intense pressure can't even be compared to heaven, to the eternal weight of glory.
If we were to use the old-fashioned scales, if I were to take all that intense pressure and put it on the scale, it would go like this. But the minute I start to produce that glory, that heaven, that relationship, the scales don't even balance anymore.
What Paul does here is take our eyes and take them off of our circumstances and onto the future, with the understanding—and this is really important now—with the understanding that the future is as certain as the present. It's not some "maybe this will happen."
Looking at Things Unseen
He said the key, verse 18, is: we don't look at the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen, because the things that we see are temporal. It's the outer man. It's decaying. The things we don't see are eternal.
Our instincts run just the other way. In our minds, we think that we are really living in the land of the living, and then all of a sudden we pass to the land of the dying. What Paul says is, no, you're in the land of the dying, and you pass to the land of the living.
Don't lose heart. How can I do that? Well, I'm realistic. The outer man is decaying, but I need inner man. I need to be refreshed day by day, and I understand now I need to think in a big, eternal picture. I need to think long term. Life is difficult, but not compared to Christ.
Remembering Those Who've Gone Before
I told you Sandy's got me cleaning stuff out, so I found a sport coat, and I put it on. It comes to about here, and the sleeves are about here, but it may fit someday. She said, "When's the last time you wore that?" I said, "I don't know." She said, "Well, when do you think it was?" I said, "I don't know, but it's a houndstooth, black and white, cashmere sport coat. It's very, very nice." I went into the pocket, and I pulled it out, and there's the itinerary, so this is the last time I wore it. I was emceeing a banquet for Larry Wright, so the last time I wore it was in April of 1998.
She said, "Well, this somewhat violates the one-year rule." I said, "All right, well, I'll put it in the maybe pile here." It got me thinking, because I sat and read this thing, and it was vintage Larry and his team. It was put together in a way that you could just sense it was, "I didn't really want to do this."
It made me think about Larry. It made me think—I had my little roaming joint deal, and it was locked in this knuckle. It's always locked somewhere for about eight, ten hours, so it was locked in this knuckle on a Sunday morning, and this knuckle was all distorted. It reminded me of Larry's hand, and I thought, "Oh my gosh, Larry has..." Because I didn't know Larry when he really wasn't sick. Larry hasn't had any of that stuff, and he's in heaven.
Haley wrote me a note on the anniversary of Susan's death and said, "Think of this now. For a year, Mom hasn't had any chemo. Mom hasn't had to throw up. She can eat what she
wants. She can walk. She can run. And then Haley hit it, because most people put the period there, but what comes next is bigger than any of that. She's with Jesus. It's all those things.
I mean, I have to ask myself this all the time. Would I take heaven with all of those things, but without Jesus? And I'm afraid that I find myself thinking more about, I can't wait to get out of this body and into that new body, see Larry, see Susan, see whoever. See in this perfect environment, but that isn't heaven. Heaven is the presence of Christ. And what Paul is saying is that I want this heaven and this reality of Jesus to be so real that this momentary light affliction falls kind of into place of its own. It gets perspective.
A Book Recommendation on Eternity
I just fire-hosed some stuff at you. There's a little book. I don't know if you're a reader. You should be to some extent. Some people read a lot. Some people read little. I tend to buy big books, but read little books, me.
I have stacks of half-finished books, and I have friends who feel so guilty about it, and I say, I don't feel guilty at all. If I say to the author, I'm going to give you $25, and I'm willing to read half of it, if you can't make me want to read the second half, it's an author problem, not a reader problem. I don't know if that's true or not, but it makes me feel better. Most guys don't have a book in them. They have a pamphlet in them, but you can't sell pamphlet.
This is a little book, little meaning about 160 pages, and it's small. It's not much taller than this. The author is Randy Alcorn, and the title of the book is In Light of Eternity. You have to be a little bit careful, because Alcorn has written another book, and I can't remember the title, but it's very similar. It's a novel. That's not the book I'm talking about. It's called In Light of Eternity. Alcorn has also written almost a textbook that's just called Heaven, but it's a tough read. It's a tough textbook, In Light of Eternity. It's a wonderful book.
I'm sure there's things in it, though He bases as much as He can, maybe everything that He does on the scripture, I'm sure there's some things in it that are inaccurate, but it will take your view of heaven and just expand it and make you actually honestly, earnestly desire to go there. I remember as Sarah asked me one time, she could have been like maybe 10 or 11, and she said, I really want to go to heaven, Dad, but I'm just unclear what we're going to do forever. What are we going to do forever there? This book will help.
Our Passion for Heaven Should Be Overflowing
In there, Alcorn writes this, "Like a bride's dream of sharing a home with her groom, our love for heaven should be overflowing and contagious just like our love for God should be. Our passion for God and our passion for heaven should be inseparable. The more I learn about God the more excited I get about heaven, the more I learn about heaven the more excited I get about God."
So there's the old kind of cliche, those Christians are so heavenly minded they're no earthly good. So let me give you two thoughts on that. One, I've discovered in practice it's exactly the opposite. Most Christians are so earthly minded they're no heavenly good. But if you stick with it here's what I'm saying. Most Christians should be so heavenly minded that we become of earthly value.
The Freedom of Eternal Perspective
There's a great freedom in this because we're not living anymore for people to please a person or for some caricature that we think we should be. We don't have to worry about that. There's a great freedom.
I mean there's a reason you can't take your game from the driving range to the course. On the driving range there isn't any pressure. You got a bucket of balls. You hit this one, if you don't hit it well you hit the next one. On the course you have one shot and it's not like sitting on flat land with the same thing. It's like going to the putting green and sitting there and drilling the same putt over and over again and being impressive. Well it's nice to have a stroke but when I get on the course I rarely have the same putt four times in a row.
All of a sudden Jesus comes along and He said listen, take on my yoke, it's easy. He doesn't mean life's simple. He understands the reality that it's tough and it's persecution. He said you don't have to worry about that. You don't even have to worry about the outcome. I control the outcome. So when I share the gospel I don't have to be worried about whether I get each word just right or the person right. It doesn't matter. He called me to proclaim the truth. All of a sudden I realized that I'm living not for myself or the people around me but for Christ. That's all that begins to matter. Now I have this perspective.
Living for the Long Tomorrow
A.W. Tozer writes this, "Let no one apologize for the powerful emphasis Christianity lays upon the doctrine of the world to come. Right there lies its immense superiority to everything else within the whole sphere of human thought or experience. We do well to think of the long tomorrow."
D.L. Moody on his deathbed supposedly said this and I quote, "Soon you will read in the newspaper I'm dead. Don't believe it for a moment. I'll be more alive than ever before." Now we say that and we say we believe it but we say it here in the classroom but we got to go to the laboratory. Every one of us who are biblical Christians are at a point where we know to be absent of the body is to be present with the Lord and the freedom I don't have to fear death. There's just great freedom in the life.
Pleasant Inns Along the Journey
Along comes the world. C.S. Lewis offers this insight. "Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will encourage us to never mistake them for our home."
So now in this world, He's what He's saying, there's going to be these moments. There's going to be these incredible moments. The time you go, it doesn't get any better than this. I know, Brayden's birthday was a week ago but on his birthday and that was the birthday
party day. On that day, all he and his three brothers and sisters were all sick with the flu and that picture of a party was distorted. I know what this is going to be like. I know what tonight's going to be like. These kids are going to be in heaven. They're going to have their pizza, which they like. I would prefer to be at Nello's, Peter Piper. They're going to have ice cream. They're going to have cake. They're going to have these little tokens and they'll be all gently rolling the ball up for the thing except Yale, who prefers to play the game overhanded. And they're going to laugh. They're going to push each other around. They're going to be with cousins. It will be perfect.
And God gives us, now as adults, whatever the adult version of that is, God gives us little moments like that in our life. And what can happen is we can confuse those moments and think this is home when in fact it isn't.
Don't Lose Heart
So step number 11 in this whole process is don't lose heart. It's easy to have all ten of those in place. It's easy to say amen. It's easy to say I believe this and I know you do, but along comes life. And He says don't lose heart. When all of a sudden I'm thrown off at that point, how do I recalibrate? I acknowledge the outer man's decaying, but the inner man is being renewed day by day through prayer, Bible study, relationship, community.
And this momentary light affliction needs perspective. Sandy's going through some stuff and the other day she said look at this picture. And it's a picture of me. I coached Little League for two years. We were the bad news bears. We really were. I mean it was we were a bunch of freaks. I was a freak and they were freaky. And she said look at how tall and thin you look in this picture. And I said I'm standing next to eight-year-olds.
It's an amazing picture. I looked at that picture. I said that is an amazing picture because I look tall but I look lean. But I look tall. Here is the reality. I'm really not. Now I had Lucy the other day. So I got loose like this. She's about this tall. I look tall standing next to Lucy. But if I stand next to Randy Johnson, I'll look smarter. But I don't know that. That's a cheap, that's a stupid cheap joke. I should even say I don't even know Randy Johnson. He could be a Rhodes scholar. He went to Rhodes University. But I look short standing next to Randy Johnson.
The Power of Perspective
This momentary light affliction can look overwhelming. But Paul can say it's weightless intense pressure because I have perspective on it. If this was all that it was about, it would be bad. But this is a means to something bigger and better. It's knowing Christ. And Christ is at the core of all this.
Obviously Christ is at the core of Christmas so the timing is perfect. That's what we're going to look at next week. If you have somebody, I just offer this every once in a while, that this time of year, maybe throughout your year, somebody you've been talking to and talking about Christ and Christmas is kind of a natural time. My daughter Sarah called I think three or four weeks ago and said, what time are the Christmas Eve services because I've got three different people from work who want to join us. You may have people in your life that you've been talking about Christ and what is all this stuff. Next Thursday morning would be a great time to invite them. You know lure them in with a promise of breakfast or something. And I'll tee up what can be the discussion of breakfast and that's who's Jesus and what are you going to do with Him.
Let's pray. Father, thank You for this lesson and this truth and this reminder that I need day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. It's so easy to be overwhelmed by the circumstances around us. God, refocus us. Put our minds on You. Put the world around us that we have today and those issues. Just put them in an eternal perspective. God, help us enjoy this journey along the way, but understand it's a journey. It's not the end. It brings us to You. Father, thanks for that truth. We love You, we worship You in Christ's name, amen.