Living to Win Over Stress
Tom Shrader addresses stress as the inevitable wear and tear of living, teaching five foundational truths from James 1:2-4 that can transform how believers handle life's trials. He emphasizes that God is in control, forgives sin, serves as our only hope in a temporary world, works all things for good, and never changes. These truths provide practical hope for navigating daily pressures and overwhelming circumstances.
“Stress is essentially the wear and tear of life—it's what happens to you as you move through life and this thing takes a chunk out of you and this takes a chunk out of you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Living to Win (2014)
Recorded: 2014
Duration: 38 min
Themes: stress, trials, hope, trust, sovereignty, forgiveness, perseverance, peace, overwhelmed by circumstances, dealing with daily pressure, struggling with anxiety, facing difficult times, feeling worn down, parent under stress, working professional, new believer
Scripture: James 1:2-4, Colossians 1:15-16, Psalm 139, Psalm 51:9-12, 1 John 1:9, 1 Corinthians 6, Romans 6:12, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18, Romans 8:28, James 1:17, Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8
Theological Themes: providence, gods control, sanctification, spiritual growth, biblical hope, divine sovereignty, perseverance of saints, unchanging god
Full Transcript
Week seven of an eight-week series titled Living to Win. When Sandy said it was raining and I looked outside and it was this cool cloudy day, here's what I wanted to do—maybe you did too—I wanted to go right back to bed. You got up and you're here, and you are about to be rewarded for being here. I don't say this very often, but I'm telling you this—for me today is life-changing stuff.
We do lessons all the time. I just sent out a letter the other day—we've done 4,500 lessons and we've distributed approximately eight hundred and ten thousand CDs at no cost, by the way. We've had an amazing ministry with just God's blessing it. But so often we do a lesson and I want you to write your notes and you got your notebooks and you got your iPads and I'm going, "They type this stuff—they can't possibly—how are they going to use it? Do they ever use it?" You're going to be able to use this today before you get out of the parking lot. This today is really good, important stuff.
If you have your Bibles, open them to James chapter 1. I'll give you a little background. The topic, if you remember I think I mentioned, is stress.
Understanding Stress: From Engineering to Life
When we think of stress, we tend to think in medical psychological terms. Originally it meant a mutual force or action between contiguous surfaces of body causing external forces of tension and shear—intensity of this force was expressed in pounds per square inch. You think of engineering, but now we think in terms of psychological terms.
I'm going to give you my favorite definition of stress: stress is essentially the wear and tear of life. Stress is essentially living. It's what happens to you as you move through life and this thing takes a chunk out of you, and this takes a chunk out of you, and this takes a chunk out of you. You start off the day and everything is great, and it begins with the first red light at McQueen and Elliot and it goes—here you go, same old deal. I'm thinking today I'm going to conquer Circle K—there's no way there can be a line today, or the landscape guys can't be working today. I was number 13 in line at Circle K. This is impossible. Well now I'm going, "Tom, relax, it's Circle K, it doesn't matter."
The Medical Reality of Stress
Michael DeBakey said this: high blood pressure, cholesterol, lack of exercise, obesity, cigarette smoking all contribute to heart disease, but more and more it's beginning to appear that the single greatest cause of heart attack is the stress of life—the wear and tear of living.
It's not a US problem. The director of Britain's National Association of Mental Health writes this: "The whole Western world is under stress. Our mode of living produces continuous stress from the moment we're born. It hits everyone. There's no escaping it. Stress affects the apparently happy, healthy people just as much as the natural-born worrier. I'm left in no doubt that stress is the fastest growing disease in the Western world."
AMA—just a one sentence quote: "50% of all visits by patients to physicians involve stress as a health problem." That makes stress more common than the common cold. From my medical experience, which is vast in the last two years, the reason stress is so high is because that's the first thing they go for. I mean, I'm not 30 seconds into this, every meeting and they go, "Well, are you under a lot of stress?" And I said, "The only stress I have is that question every time I come in. No, I'm not under a lot of stress." But if you ask that and that guy's had a particularly bad day at Circle K or the red light, he's likely to say yes, and therefore it launches all that.
Stress Is Unavoidable
I'm not trying to go to volume—it's bigger, I don't care. Here's what I know: stress is part of life. There's an article in The Wall Street Journal and they were dealing and addressing the issue of stress—get this now—in the life of four-year-olds who attend preschool. Well, I mean, we can't get it anymore, so it's that way of life. It's that constant thing.
I went to a meeting yesterday, left my phone in the car, and every 30 seconds I wondered if maybe something had happened. What has Ted Cruz said? What's going on? This thing's got to be okay. So it's that continuous—it's relentless, it just is at you, it's always there.
Recognizing Stress Overload
Here's a couple—if you want to do a little self-test, nothing magic here—symptoms of stress overload. You could guess them: daydreaming about getting away from it all (that's every day), increased use of alcohol or smoking, thoughts trail off while speaking or writing, excessive worrying about everything, sudden outbursts of temper and hostility, mistrust of friends and family and co-workers (that's when you were eating that turkey but you were trying to figure out how they were conspiring to get you out of the will last week), forgetfulness about appointments and deadlines, brooding, feelings of inadequacy, reversal, unusual behavior (some of you become nice), decision making becomes difficult.
I remember I had this guy I was working with years ago, and he was under a ton of stress and he was going to go to Mills or somewhere—so that'll give you a date on it—and get a pair of gray slacks for a blazer. He came back and I said, "You find a pair?" And he said, "I couldn't—there were so many shades of gray."
Basic Solutions Everyone Knows
Well, here's what you do, and you probably don't need to write these down and you already know them. There's at least three things you can do for this stress: number one, look at what you're eating; number two, exercise; and number three, get sleep. I just pulled it up this morning on USA Today—just some new article: "Americans lack sleep." Well, if they factored me in, we could balance it all out, get it back to normal.
You don't need me or anybody else to give you those three: eat right, exercise—and it doesn't have to be... I know it's no fun to go to the Christmas party. You know, like seeing Sandy's running today, and so they'll say, "Why are you running?" and they'll go, "How much?" and she'll go, "I don't know," and then she's going to run like—I can't remember what—like 1,500 miles this year. She'll swim 500, woman, she'll...
go. How about you? "You're working out." I walk. "Oh how far do you walk?" Around the block. I don't know, a mile. It doesn't sound very flashy, but it's just as effective. "And your knees are okay?" Okay.
So that's how I look at it. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about five things you can know in this issue of stress.
The Paradox of Counting Trials as Joy
Look at James 1:2. Let's break it apart and get into it. "Consider it all joy my brothers when you encounter various trials."
The first time I ever heard that, Larry Wright was teaching and he made what to me is the obvious observation: that's odd. How do you consider trials joyful? How do you consider it all joy when you go to the doctor and back comes the scan and there's the spot? Or the kid calls and says I've been in a wreck? Or the boss calls you in: "It's that time of year. We're downsizing and we're starting today, and we're starting with you." How do you count it all joy?
I love this: "various trials." The word in the Greek literally means multicolored. These trials come in all shapes and sizes. There's a trial of not having enough. There's a trial of not having enough money. But there's also a trial that comes with having surplus money. We miss those good trials.
Trials Come in Many Colors
If I say right now you're going to have a trial today, you think of something catastrophic. But it's the good things too. I am slowly, my body just keeps winding down and I've got this stuff in my hands so sore that now to turn on the key—and I don't say this so you go "ah" and get me a great Christmas gift, though there's still days for that—but to turn my key on now I can't do it like I used to. I got to put it between these fingers and do this. I think I'm done golfing. This kills me. I picked up a putter the other day and I couldn't put it down. It hurt so much.
I don't remember one time standing on the tee and saying, "God, thank You that I can take it back and get it through and hit that long 195-yard drive." I don't remember ever saying that. So there's the test of this: how's He going to survive that? How is it when it doesn't work? All that kind of stuff. But you got the test of when things are good. Multicolored trials. Got it?
The Inevitability of Trials
Consider it joy when—there's the inevitability. Let's make sure we get this. Verse 2: when. Here they come. They're going to come. They're inevitable. "Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials." Got it?
Now here's the key word, verse 3: knowing. How can I consider it joy? Well, I know something. I know that this testing of my faith produces endurance.
The Reality of Midlife Conversations
I had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—all three days—I had somebody who called who wanted to meet. Said, "Can we meet tomorrow morning?" All three of them were the same deal. I have this conversation all day every day. They were guys all about 65 who were saying, "I'm kind of at the end of this. Still got tread left in the tires. Don't want to quit, but I'm not looking for a job either. I don't want to go away. I'm afraid if I go away I'll atrophy away, and I want to finish strong."
I have that conversation all day every day. And He's saying—James is saying—if you want endurance, here's what you know: it's a result of the testing of your faith. It's a result of the wear and tear of living. It's the result of the stress in your life.
Five Things to Know About Stress
So I'm going to give you five things to know. None of these are going to knock your socks off, and you already know them, but when you put them together I'm telling you this is life-changing.
Number one: God is in control. Years ago somebody sent me—and it's about this size, about the size of the coaching brochure, about this size of plaque—really cool font. It says, "Tom, trust Me. I have everything under control. Jesus." I don't think Jesus signed it, but we could go on Antique Roadshow and find out. I don't know, but this is pretty cool. Our bathroom walks into this little kind of a hall that leads to the bedroom, and I come right out of the bathroom every day, and I'm eye-to-eye with that plaque. A lot of days I really need to see that plaque. I know it, but it's like Samuel Johnson said: we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught.
God's Control Over All Creation
Colossians chapter 1, verse 15: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things are created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him." God's in control.
There was a guy from Colorado Springs who used to come to this study once or twice a year when he was in town visiting. His name was Bob Hage. Amazing guy. He was an aviation guy, wrote a book on aviation. I think it was from 1902 to 2002, Kitty Hawk to the Shuttle. He worked for McDonnell Douglas, and his job early on was the liaison. How cool would this job be? The liaison between McDonnell Douglas and the seven original astronauts. Brilliant guy. Aerospace. He was a rocket scientist. Brilliant guy.
A Rocket Scientist's Discovery About Gravity
He is in the midst of—Kennedy says in a speech, when you think about this, that we wouldn't make—when John Kennedy said we're going to go to the moon and return a man safely by the end of the decade, well they wouldn't make that statement today without a five-year study on how they were going to do it. They didn't have a rocket. They didn't have anything. You just put a vision out there and they fulfilled it. Imagine that.
Hage is in the middle of it and they're trying to figure out this thing called gravity. At the same time, Hage is on a personal sojourn and he's around the world. He's with Francis Schaeffer in L'Abri trying to figure out the meaning of life and how everything works together. He's on the phone talking one day—I assume a conference call, I don't know—and gravity's the topic. "We don't know how it works," and so on. He gets on the phone and his maid, his housekeeper, said to him, "I can explain gravity." He said, "Really?" She said, "Yeah, it's Colossians 1:15. He is the image of the invisible. All things are created by Him."
it holds all things together. And on that day this brilliant man, who'd been on this sojourn all over the world with all these other brilliant people, was led to Christ by his housekeeper. That God holds it all together.
We live on a planet - I don't know how they measure this stuff - but we live on this earth. It's six septillion five hundred and eighty-eight sextillion tons. And it spins on its axis at a thousand miles an hour in an orbit, moving in an orbit of a thousand miles a minute. We're like one galaxy that if you travel at the speed of light - 186,000 miles a second - takes you a hundred twenty-five thousand years to cross, and we're one of a million of these things. The universe is expanding, and we're wondering what's happened, how does it stay together, and yet you can say, "Well Halley's Comet is going to come around on this day at this time."
They're getting ready to launch a satellite. I'm the only guy on the planet - on DirecTV, channel 345 is the rural farm network, channel 346 is NASA, and I watch each of them. I watched five minutes of a tractor auction yesterday. That was absolutely fascinating. I don't know anything about tractors. I love John Deere, because I guess that's home, so I watch that, and I go to NASA. We forget, these guys are up there floating around right now. They just sent three new astronauts up. They're getting ready to launch this new spaceship. They're testing out the boosters that'll allow enough propulsion to send the guys and gals to Mars. And they calibrate this, and they can count on all these. How? Because God created this, and He didn't wind it up and walk away.
God Is in Control When Life Feels Chaotic
The world oftentimes feels like it's spinning out of control, and maybe even your world feels like it's out of control. But here's what the psalmist writes in Psalm 139 - I think we quoted this last week as well - he pleads, "God investigate me, get all the facts firsthand. I'm an open book to you. Even from a distance, you know what I'm thinking. You know when I leave, when I get back. I'm never out of your sight. You know everything I'm going to say before I start the first sentence. I look behind me and you're there. I look ahead and you're there. Your reassuring presence is coming and going. It's too wonderful. I can't take it all in."
As stress, the wear and tear of life comes into your world, and there's that overwhelming sense that everything's out of control - everything is out of our control, but God is in control. So the phrase that we used I think in the last six months is our hope is rooted in the character of God, and the sovereignty of God, and the promises of God, and the faithfulness of God. "Tom, trust me, I have everything under control," Jesus says.
God Forgives Sin
Here's the second thing: God forgives sin. Sin can cause a great deal of stress in our life. In Psalm 51, a psalm written by David after Nathan the prophet had confronted him, David pleads, "Hide your face from my sins, blot out my iniquities." Psalm 51:10, "Create in me a clean heart, don't cast me away from your presence." Psalm 51:12, "Restore the joy of their salvation." What'll kill joy in you? Sin, the guilt of it.
My guess is some of you were sitting at Thanksgiving looking at kids and grandkids and all of a sudden you thought, "Gosh, I got this thing that's going on in my life. If they knew me, really knew me, they wouldn't love me, they wouldn't care for me, they'd blow me right out of here." And that may or may not be true. I don't know, I don't know your family. My guess is they're probably looking at you thinking, "Boy, if he knew what was going on in my life."
Here's what I know: God says if you confess your sin, He forgives you. First John 1:9, First Corinthians 6, you were washed and justified, sanctified, you're a new creature, you've been bought at a price. Now He says therefore in Romans 6:12, "Don't let sin reign in your body so you obey its lust." You're a new creature. You've been forgiven. You're cleansed.
A Story of Grace and Forgiveness
I used to work with a guy, great guy, and he had a 16-year-old daughter. She came home one day and she said, "Dad, I'm pregnant." Now maybe some of you have experienced that either in your own life or your kids' life, and that's a hard thing and all sorts of emotions get mushed in there - your pride, your ego, what will other people think. And yet here's this little girl. She's dying on the inside.
So we had a conversation. "Tell me what happened." "Well, we only did it once." And now it seems like all these people who are kids only do it once and get pregnant, and then I know people who are married and been presumably doing it for 20 years and can't get pregnant. I don't know how that happens. "But we only did it once." "Well let's assume that's true, or let's say you're doing it every day, I don't care. Tell me about it." She said, "Dad, I'm broken over this. I feel so guilty. It's all wrong. It's sin. I confessed it. We're not doing it anymore. We're not doing that. Dad, I just need to tell you that and we want to get married." And he said, "You're 16." "So well, he's 17." "Okay, well I see now it'll work."
So that was 30 years ago. That kid that she was pregnant with is now graduated from college and has kids and they're still together. I mean it's a wonderful story. In the moment you feel all that guilt and shame and you look back and you get the Christmas card that doesn't say at the bottom, "Boy let me tell you the rest of the story." You don't need it.
Well she goes to school and now she's got the little pooch and so you're going to get married and everybody knows and the kids are saying to her, "Are you going to wear a white wedding dress?" Well they don't know. Kids then they don't know or even have a conscious about it, but you know what they're saying there, right? And she came home and she said to dad, "They're asking me am I going to wear a white wedding dress? I don't know what I said." And he sat her down. How great a moment is this? And he said, "Honey, what you did..."
The father said, "Tell me that what dad did was wrong. It was sin." She said, "You confess that, right?" "Yeah, I did." "And God forgave you, didn't He?" "Yes, He did." He said, "What's the color of forgiveness?" She said, "White." He said, "Honey, if you wear any other color dress but a white wedding dress, you're gonna break your daddy's heart." He got it. You don't need to carry this around.
I get it. Sin is sin. I get consequences. But you need to internalize that you're forgiven. Now there's two extremes there. One is, "He's gonna forgive me, so sin away." The other extreme is when people say, "I can't forgive myself." I don't do much counseling anymore, but back in the old days they would say, "Oh, I can't forgive myself." I would say, "How selfish can you be? You didn't sin against you. You sinned against God. He forgave you. How can you not forgive yourself?"
God Is Our Only Hope and Life Is Temporary
Point number three is a huge point. I love this. I think it encapsulates so much of everything I teach: God is our only hope, and life is temporary.
You remember about five years ago the BP oil spill? You remember the picture of that oil pouring out, pouring out, and it was constant. They kept it on, and it became so prevalent that they put the picture up in the upper corner of the screen, so they'd be doing the news or sports and there was that oil pouring out of there. Then they came on after I think it was 57 days or something, and they said, "We've got the best mechanical minds and Nobel Prize winners in the world working on it."
I'm sitting there and I became mesmerized with that picture. It became for me a metaphor of how I see the world. I'm watching this stuff spill all around me, and the greatest minds are talking about it, but nobody can fix it. The debt just hit 18 trillion dollars. I remember standing in here and talking about it being 13 trillion, and yet I haven't heard one word out of these guys that want to fix it. They're in their 30th year in office, and they all tell us how bad it is, but nobody can fix it.
The World's Problems and Our Response
I look around and I'm going, "It feels like..." Now I sound like the crotchety old man, but I'll join you in your world because you're already there. It feels like the whole world's going to hell and we're watching it all. Doesn't it feel like that? You're home and you watch, and you turn it on, and you just sink into this thing.
What jerks me out of that is discipline. I don't listen to talk radio anymore. I only watch an hour of Fox at night. I discipline myself. I don't want... I'm not gonna let Sean Hannity ruin my life. I'm not gonna do it. And you need to do the same thing. I'm telling you, if you're watching that stuff, you can't watch it and not have your mind go down there.
But here's the key: this is all passing away. I've got to put it in perspective. Second Corinthians 4:16-18: "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, for we look not at the things that are seen but the things that are unseen, because the things that are seen are temporal, the things that are unseen are eternal."
The Reality of Physical Decline
Again, I grapple with how honest to be, and I want to tell you, but my body's driving me crazy. Literally this morning I'm looking in the mirror, having gotten out of the shower—it's an unpleasant experience, I wouldn't encourage this—and I'm going, "My arms are atrophying, my gut's hanging out, I'm not eating, I can't see." I went to the doctor the other day and he says, "I need hearing aids."
I said, "Well, I'm a little vain. Can I get those that go in that you can't see?" He said, "No, that frequency won't work. You'll need one that people can see." I'm getting fitted by this girl, and I'm sitting there and she said, "Do you get out much? Do you talk to many people?" I don't know why she asked, but I have no value. You could take me out and shoot me. I don't even have scrap value anymore. I've got a heart nobody wants, I've got hands nobody wants, I can't hear.
It's funny, but it's not funny when you're there. I mean, I walked out of there so discouraged. When she said to me, "Do you get out much?" I thought, "My world's shrinking. I can't hear, I can't see." Brayden came over the other day—Brayden's eight—and he said, "Can I have a Gatorade?" I said, "I got good news and bad news, buddy. You can have a Gatorade. It's out in the refrigerator. But the bad news is the only two people here are you and me, and neither one of us can open the Gatorade."
I don't know if you guys buy Gatorade, but those Gatorade caps are like... I said, "The only thing we can do is wait for Sandy to get home." He said, "Well, can I take it over to mom's house and have her open it?" I literally the other day got a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and started toward Haley's house to say, "Honey, can you open this water?" I'm gonna make sure you have an impact. I don't want you to go, "Poor Tom," but in the middle of that, the only thing that sustains me is that this is temporary.
Our Eternal Hope
Now I'm such a derelict that I want to get out of this world. Not to be with Jesus—that's good—but to get out of this world. First Thessalonians 4:14: "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who've fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the Word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who've fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord."
Now you read that, and then what do I get? I don't get any comfort. Then I get, "Well, is this pre-trib or post-trib?" I don't care.
God's Eternal Perspective
The point of that isn't that you figure it out. I don't care, call them "Groot." I don't care. Verse 18—and we don't even do that. When you hear somebody read that passage, they read verse 14 to 17. I don't know if you know verse 18. Let me read that: "Therefore comfort one another with these words."
This is temporary, and I've got to remember that. I need that perspective. My only hope is not the Republicans or the Democrats or the Tea Party or a new administration or the old administration or they get their stuff together or fire the coach or get this over here, get a new distribution center. My only permanent hope is Christ, and I need to get that perspective. I need to get temporary versus eternal.
The world looks, by and large, at those of us who would gather on a Thursday morning at 7 o'clock to listen to this—they look at you as losers. They see you as somebody who's deficient, who needs a crutch. We think when we die we get this vision: we're in the land of the living going to the land of the dying. But in reality, we're in the land of the dying going to the land of the living. And there's our hope.
God Works All Things Together for Good
Number four: it's Romans 8:28. "And God causes all things to work together for good." That phrase actually begins with the phrase "and we know." There's that phrase again: "and we know." That'd be a good exercise for you to do over the holidays. Get a concordance—you can probably get one online that you can use—and just look up that word "know." How's it used? What is it that He's telling us? There's a fact.
"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." It doesn't say God causes all things—He doesn't cause sin—but God orchestrates all things to come together for our good and His glory.
So if you had a Bible that wasn't that big old black thing you have in front of you, but it was one verse—Romans 8:28—from that verse you can conclude that God is all-knowing and all-powerful. He has to be in order for that to be true. I can't explain it. I can think of the worst things, the best things. I can role-play life with the best of them. But here's what I know: at the end of the day, when I ask the "why" question, my ultimate answer is "my good and His glory."
God's Unchanging Character
Here's the last thing, and it's not very flashy. It tends to get glossed over, but if it's missing, the rest of this is shaky. Number five: God does not change.
Let's talk about the attributes of God. Love is always at the top of the list, and omniscience, all-powerful, all-knowing. The one that never hits the list is immutability—He doesn't change. He's immutable.
James 1:17: "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." Malachi 3:6: "For I the Lord do not change." Hebrews 13:8: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever."
See, those first four things we talked about have no value if God's changing. Remember what we talked about: that our hope is rooted in the character and sovereignty, faithfulness, and promise of God. He's trustworthy.
A Lesson in Trustworthiness
I have my grandson Yale, who is a piece of work. He is incapable of telling the truth, and we debate about whether it's hostile or not—it's just him. I said to him the other day, "What are you going to do the day after Thanksgiving?" "We're going to Denver." "I said really? I didn't know that." "Yeah, yeah, flying up Frontier—Frontier Airlines." "I said really? Frontier? Going to Denver? How long you going to stay?" "I think a week."
So I'm talking to Haley. I said, "So you're going to Denver the day after Thanksgiving?" And she said, "We're going to Denver the day after Thanksgiving?" He doesn't bat an eye.
There was a song they sang in their school play last Christmas, and I love the song. It's "Arizona Wonderland." I screw the words up and I sing them for him, and they laugh. So he's there and I said, "Hey, I'm ready for the play Tuesday night." He said, "Yeah, because they weren't going to sing the song this year. We're going to sing 'Arizona Wonderland.'" I said, "Wow, really?" He said, "Yeah, yeah, they decided to do it again."
Well, I know this kid, and I'm going, "Oh really?" And his brother's back there. I said, "Hey Braden, are you singing 'Arizona Wonderland' next Tuesday?" "Oh, we're not going to sing that." He's incapable of telling you the truth.
God's Reliable Word
I forgot my point. What did I say before this? Oh, God—yeah, yeah. His word! That's what it was: His word. I mean, I'm not kidding you, and I don't think it's malicious, and he'll smile. "How's your fantasy team doing?" "Really good." "Did you win?" "Yeah, last week." "What place are you in?" "I think first." And Braden said, "Papa, they're in last."
I come to God and He says, "We're in first." "You're in first?" "We're going to sing 'Arizona Wonderland.'" "You're going to sing it?" He says, "I'm in control." He's in control. "I forgive your sin." He forgives your sin. "I'm your hope, and this is temporary, and I'll come again." You can believe Him. "I'll work all things together for good." And you know what?
So Yale gets an award the other day. He gets an award—some student award. I said, "What's this for?" He said, "Being trustworthy." I said, "Do you have a clue what trustworthy means?" And he said, "Yeah, I think it means honest and tell the truth and integrity." And I said, "You got it." I'm checking to see if the name's been scratched out and he wrote in his own name.
God's trustworthy. That was my point. Not the best professional ending in the world, but you got the point, right?
Looking Ahead
Next week we take our last time before Christmas break, and we deal with uncertainty. I'll tip my hand and tell you it's got a lot of the same stuff, and this just goes back to those same basic blocking and tackling over and over again. I mentioned that to you again—I'm not hyping stuff—but if you've got a kid, if you've got a coach in your life, that'd be a great gift.
Christmas gift for that coach.
Father, thank you for Your word. Thank you for the assurance—blessed assurance Jesus is mine, what a foretaste of glory divine. God, thank you for that truth. We pray it in Christ's name, amen.