Living An Examined Life: Stop And Take An Inventory
Tom Shrader challenges believers to stop and take inventory of their lives using biblical criteria rather than worldly measures like money, possessions, or status. Drawing from Paul's words in 2 Timothy 4 about fighting the good fight and finishing the race, he presents five key questions for self-evaluation: recognizing the importance of self-evaluation, understanding the value of time, ensuring victories exceed defeats, finishing as strongly as one started, and anticipating Christ's return. He emphasizes the need for trusted people to help identify blind spots and warns about the spiritual battle believers face.
“We are not happy here because we are not at home here.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: An Examined Life (2002)
Recorded: 2002 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 44 min
Themes: examination, inventory, evaluation, purpose, direction, accountability, priorities, stewardship, mid-life reflection, year-end review, feeling directionless, lacking purpose, seasoned believer, spiritual mentor, accountability partner, facing major decisions
Scripture: 2 Timothy 4:6-7, Galatians 6, Psalm 90:12, 1 Timothy 6:6-8, Ephesians 6, 1 Corinthians 9, Jude 3-4, Philippians 1:21, Revelation 22:20
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, discipleship, christian growth, biblical worldview, spiritual warfare, perseverance, eschatology
Full Transcript
Lisa, thank you. Good morning. It is, oh wow. See, I'm not used to that response. That's pretty impressive right there. It is good to see you this morning. Hope you had a good night's sleep.
Just listening to Jeff go through the agenda for the day makes me tired. Forty minutes from now that parade comes streaming by here with the big floats up in the air and the balloons and helicopters and probably not. But I do want to honor that. I want to make sure that you're out of here. That's a big deal. That's fun. That'll be a good time.
So pray with me and we'll get started this morning. Father, we come before You today and we ask You to help us look at our life and examine our hearts to see if indeed we're living a life that brings honor and glory to You. And God, we pray that as we see our life, we will be pleased with what we see. And if not, God, that we would have the strength and the courage to honestly change the things that are displeasing to You. And we pray that to You in Christ's name. Amen.
The Need for Intentional Direction
Well, every year at our church and in the studies I do during the week, I do kind of a year-end review, preview type of thing. And that flows out of my firm belief that most of us, if left on our own, will kind of just drift along. It's always been viewed as an asset to say, I just go with the flow. That's terrific if the flow's going where you want to go. But that's not so valuable if the flow's going this way and your desire is to go this way.
My further experience with people is most of them don't even know where it is they want to go. I don't care if you are here and you are one of the students, if you are in your early twenties, if you are like me and you are older, and some of you are laughing and you're way older than me, so knock it off. So here we go, wherever we are, it's never too late to start this process.
Living An Examined Life
Here's what we're going to ask you to do. We're going to ask you to be living an examined life. That's what we want you to do. And what I want you to do today is something that's really important in that process, and that's to stop and take an inventory of your life.
Now if we went down to the parade today and we talked to, let's say, twenty people, and we said to them, hey, how are you doing in your life? We want to examine your life, how are you doing? What I want you to see is there has to be some set of questions that you ask.
If you go to a new restaurant and you meet somebody the next day, and they say, how was the restaurant, scale of one to ten, how was it? And you said, six. Well, there was something you did that got you to the six. I mean, you evaluated the ambience, or the service, or the food, or the waiter, or the owner, or the price. Something got you to the six.
Common Questions People Ask Themselves
So I've said to you, in fact, let's do that right now. You get a number. Evaluating your life on a scale of one to ten. Of one being absolutely dismal, ten being it is as good as it could possibly ever be. You get a number. Get a number like you would at that restaurant.
If we stopped twenty people out here and we asked them to do that exercise out here at the parade today, these are the kinds of questions they might ask themselves. They might be saying, am I making more money than I ever did before? A lot of people, that's a big deal. If I'm making more money, I must be doing well, I must be an eight or a nine.
Or did I acquire more things than I had last year? I separate this out because you don't need money to acquire things. We can take you into Portland today and get you a bedroom set and you won't have a payment until 2003. We can get you there right now. You've got master cards and visas and all sorts of things. Tomorrow I'm going to talk about that very thing. In the whole area of our life of just stuff and how stuff really never does what we want it to do and what I want you to see tomorrow night is, and it never will, it can't. You aren't designed to be happy with stuff.
Or maybe you had a good year if you improved your position. The organizational chart at work has changed and now you are a senior VP. You are in management, which means you work longer for less money. But you're a manager and that's fine. At least it looks good. I can't tell you how many people I know who are just carried away by a title and a card. They'll pull out a card and say executive vice president.
And maybe you feel good if you enhanced your image in the eyes of your friends. When you get together and there's a big party and you and your spouse walk in, everybody goes, shh, there they are. Look at them. Oh, man. They're really special. Or maybe you have a dark side like me if you caused envy in the eyes of your enemies. In other words, those that didn't like you before hate you even more now and you go, yeah, maybe that's good. I don't know. You could be sick that way.
Sometimes I have people that say, I must be right because they're shooting at me from both sides. And that overlooks the possibility that maybe you're just a jerk and no one likes you. But for sake of this discussion, maybe you're one of these people and you say, that's what I want. I want people to look at me and those that are enemies, I want them to be jealous.
I honestly believe you went to the parade today and you said, you know, how you doing in life? And then give me a number. These are the kinds of questions people off the street ask.
A More Profound Set of Questions
I'm going to suggest to you there's a more profound set of inventory questions and we'll look at them. There's five or six of them. And I think you need to take your life and evaluate it in light of this.
Here's the first one. Do you recognize the importance of self-evaluation? Paul says this in Galatians 6: "Each one of us should test our own actions." How you doing? That's the process we're going through right now. How you doing in life?
Here's a term. I was in a bookstore the other day, a Christian bookstore, and they have a huge used
The Disappearance of Midlife Crisis
I was looking around the bookstore the other day, particularly the self-help book section. There's a term that was driving publishing probably 15 years ago. It's a term that I used to hear all the time and I hardly ever hear anymore. Here's the term: midlife crisis. We used to hear that all the time. I'm telling you, 15 years ago we heard midlife crisis everywhere we went. I looked at my bookshelf the other day at home. I had five books dealing with midlife crisis.
We don't have midlife crisis anymore. I never hear that term. You know why? We're in constant crisis now. We can't wait for midlife to be in crisis. We're going to get in that crisis whether we like it or not.
What a midlife crisis was, in my mind, was one of two things. Either one, all of a sudden you hit that point, whatever it was. You had this goal. You were going to be a millionaire by the time you're 40. You turn 40 in a week. You have $100,000 worth of debt and you're unemployed and you're going, I don't think I'm going to get there. And that puts you in crisis. Or worse yet, your goal is to have $1 million by the time you're 40. You're 39 and you have $10 million and you're miserable. Both produce a midlife crisis.
A midlife crisis was nothing more than we stopped and took an inventory and realized how much trouble we were in. And I'm not kidding. We don't wait anymore. I have a friend who at age 32 was promoted to principal of an elementary school. And I said, what do you do next? He said, you know what, I don't know. He said, it used to be that you were 50 or 55 before you got this job. I got it at 32. I'm not interested in administration. I mean, this is as far as I want to go. He's 32. Statistically, he's going to live to be 74, 75. He's not even halfway there. And he has climbed the peak.
The Need for Outside Perspective
Have you done this? Have you stopped and taken a look? Now, I'm going to give you a little secret. You need to have somebody help you in this process. And it needs to be somebody you can trust. And if you're married, it's most likely a spouse.
In my world, I've got a lot of people that will just say really nice things to me. That was really nice. That was really good. I really enjoyed that. Even if they have a problem, they rarely say anything. Although, email has changed some of that. But God gave me Susan. And we have blind spots.
My mentor is a gentleman by the name of Larry Wright. Some of you may even know Larry. He's been around different things. He's spoken all through the Northwest, all around the country. And Larry's just somebody very, very special. And I remember one day Larry saying, you know, we all have blind spots, Tom. And I said, well, Larry, do you have blind spots? And he said, yeah, I do. And I said, well, what are they? And he said, they wouldn't be a blind spot if I knew what they were. And I said, yeah, that's exactly right. I was just testing you there.
Learning from Honest Feedback
Well, Susan will do that. It was not long ago we're leaving. We do services at our church. We do six services on the weekend. And we're driving home, and I said to Susan, how was the service? She said, fine. And I said, well, how really was it? She said, the music was great. I said, well, why do I care about the music? I said, well, I was thinking more about it. And she said, Tom, I don't know why you have to go and do that. I said, do what? She said, you made a point tonight that just didn't need to be made. You just didn't need to do that. And you know what? I knew exactly what she was saying. Because I was making the point. I said, why am I doing this?
When we left here last night, I said, so how was it? She said, it was good. That's not what I was looking for. And I said, well, what's wrong? She said, you were yelling at those people. You were yelling. Why are you yelling? I said, well, I wasn't yelling. She said, yeah, you were. I said, no, I wasn't. I said, all right. She said, I don't know. I got excited. I didn't know if they could hear me or not. I don't know. I didn't mean to yell. She said, it just defeats your whole point. Just make your point. They're smart people. They'll figure it out. If I start yelling, it's because I've decided you weren't that smart.
But you need this exercise. You have to stop and look at your life. And you need outside influence.
Recognizing the Good Along with Areas for Growth
And so often when we say this, we think of criticism. In other words, you need somebody to shoot straight with you. And we always think of all those negative things. It's not just that. Sometimes you need people to tell you the things you're doing that are going real well. I've sat down with people and said, hey, man, you know, you're really gifted. Oh, I don't think. I said, yeah, when you do that, stuff happens everywhere. Not anybody can do it. Not anybody can do it. You're really gifted. He said, really? Yeah. And I've been through that process.
Sometimes you see things in people's lives that they don't even see. People tend to underestimate their giftedness, especially, listen closely now, especially if their giftedness isn't up on the platform. If it's up here, they get all the strokes and everybody knows it and I got that. But if you've got a service gift or a mercy gift, you tend to dismiss this. You tend to just write this off. You just think everybody's this way.
The Gift of Service Recognition
I had a guy one time and he called and he said, I want to have lunch with you. And I said, all right. And I never asked why. And he said, let me tell you why so that you can be ready for it. He said, I want you to help me find my spiritual gift. And I said, all right. And I hung up. I said, finally, a question I can answer. Because this guy has the gift of service.
I was doing a Bible study on Wednesday evening. He'd be there a half hour ahead of time. He'd put on the coffee and set up the chairs. He'd get the overhead projector. I'd come in. He said, is there anything you want? Here's the microphone. And I said, no. And nobody told him to do this. He just did it.
So we get to lunch and we're sitting down. And I said, are you all right? And he said, I'm just wrestling with this. I need to know my spiritual
So we order and he said, "What do you think my spiritual gift is?" I said, "Your gift is the gift of mercy and service. You have a service gift." He said, "No, I don't." I said, "Yeah, you got a service gift." He said, "No, I don't think I do."
I said, "You come on Wednesday night. You set up the chairs. You put on the coffee. You get the overhead projector. You got microphones. You got everything there. You're the last one out. You clean up. You got a service gift here." He said, "No, I don't." I said, "Well, you do. You got a service gift." He said, "No, I don't." I said, "Why do you say that?"
Now listen to this. This is how goofy we are in our thinking. He said, "I can't have the gift of service because I enjoy it so much." See, our thought process is, "Boy, I'm going to do this for the Lord. I bet this is going to be awful. This is going to be worse. This will be drudgery." I said, "Doesn't that make sense? A gift is a special enablement. You have the function of the body of Christ. And you just light up when you do it."
Sometimes, again, especially if it's not an up-front gift, you tend to minimize that. So you need people to come along and say, "You got that gift." That's exactly what we did to that guy that day. Your life is going really well if you understand just the importance of this exercise.
Do You Understand the Value of Your Time?
Here's the second thing. It's a biggie. Do you understand the value of your time? Paul's at the end of his life in 2 Timothy 4. Paul says this: "I'm already being poured out as a drink offering. The time for my departure has come."
"Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12). The psalmist is saying this: Help us understand the finiteness of time.
My grandmother died a couple of years ago. She was 94 or 95 when she died. I hadn't really seen her in years. She was back in the Midwest and there was no point going back really to see her. She didn't know what was going on and all those things. The last time I saw my grandmother, she was arthritic, weak, couldn't move. Mind was drifting around.
Now get this. I knew—and I've never been able to explain this adequately, so maybe you'll just get it—I knew that was my future, but I couldn't see myself there. Does that make sense? I knew that's where I was headed. I know that's the end of life. I know that's what happens. But I couldn't picture myself there.
Last Wednesday, a week ago yesterday, we did something I hadn't done in 34 years. We went to the ballpark and hit fast pitch hardball. I hadn't done this in years. I'm thinking, "You know what? I bet I haven't lost a thing. When you've got a gift like this, you never lose it." I'm all ready and the first pitch I stride and before I got there, that pitch hit the backstop. I said, "Oh, I don't think I even saw that one." And you think you're never there. That's just the future. Let us understand that time is finite.
The Perfect Gift
A couple of years ago, my daughter turned 21. We were all going to try to figure out what to get her. Susan said to her, "What do you want for your birthday?" She said, "I don't care as long as Dad picks it out." I said, "All right."
So we're moving along and I said to Susan, "I've got the perfect gift." We're there and all these gifts are coming in. She said, "Where's your gift?" I said, "I've got it right here. Open all these others first so they don't feel bad after you open mine. Because this is the perfect gift." She said, "All right."
So she opens these gifts, great gifts. Everybody got her something. She said, "Where's your gift, Dad?" I gave her an envelope. She opened the envelope. There was a flight itinerary up to San Francisco and then a room at a place called Sea Ranch.
Probably most of you have never heard of it. It's 114 miles north of San Francisco. It is a magnificent place. We've been up there virtually every summer since 1983 and Sarah loves it. She opened it and she looked at it and here's what she said: "This is perfect." I said, "I knew that. I knew it was perfect." For she and I, Susan and Haley don't like it that much, but for she and I, it's been a great place.
We fly into San Francisco and we get a convertible and we got the top down and the heater on because we are freezing like mad. We got the music cranked up so loud you can't hear and we're driving up the coast. She said, "What house are we going to stay in?" I said, "Oh that's a surprise." Then we get there and she said, "That's where we're going to stay?" It was the first house, the first year that we stayed in. I said, "That's it."
Finding the Stump
Up we go and the next day I said, "We're going for a walk. We're going to find the stump." Years before, when we had walked up in there, there had been a stump that was cut. They did some logging back in there, a little stump that she'd sit on. We'd taken that stump and we'd thrown it way back. We said, "Someday we'll go and get it." We probably hadn't seen the stump in 12, 13 years.
So down the path we went and I said, "Gosh, it's right in here. Right in here was the stump, wasn't it?" She said, "Yeah. Do you remember you threw it up, like up in there, so we could find it." So we go up in there, we move some things back and there is the stump. Some leaves had fallen in around it.
I got the stump, I took it out. I set it down in the path. I got a camera. I'm looking through that viewfinder and I'm thinking, "What in the world happened to these last 15 years?" There's my little girl sitting on that stump. We took this picture and she was this high. What happened? We could go tomorrow. Hey, we got married. We're going to talk about it tomorrow morning. What happened? See, that's the way life works.
I'm going to show you this verse and then I want to come back and this will give you a preview of tomorrow night. Because we're going to study this area tomorrow night. So I don't think I'll spend much time on it. In fact, I'm going to skip through it. Let's skip through those things. Because 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 6, 7 and 8, if you take a look at it, you will understand what's key there. As Paul says, we brought nothing into the world. We can't carry anything out of it either. Paul talking about the importance of understanding time.
Did Your Victories Exceed Your Defeats?
We're in 2 Timothy 4. Paul says, I fought the good fight. You are in battle. It is a war out there. Paul writes this in Ephesians 6. You know the passage well. Put on the full armor of God. Put on the full armor of God so you can take your stand against the devil's scheme.
Now that term in the Greek, full armor of God, has this idea. Put it on and leave it on. We have a tendency to say, I put on the armor, I fight the battle, I take it off, I rest, and then I put it back on when I'm going to fight again. He says, no. Take it on and put it on and leave it on. Why? Because you're in battle 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
And you are to take your stand. Again, in the Greek, it's a military term. It means to stand firm, to not give ground for our struggle. Again, in the Greek, the idea there is hand-to-hand combat. Paul's saying this, we're not playing games here. This is really serious stuff. So you take that armor, you put it on, you don't give an inch, and you are in hand-to-hand combat.
The Reality of Our Spiritual Enemy
Our struggle, our combat, is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms. Our struggle is against Satan. Now we can go in one of two extremes when we talk about Satan. We can go with those who see Satan behind everything.
I was speaking a few years ago at a place and I got up to speak and it was nothing like this. The sound system wasn't working and so there was all sorts of things. So they came up and they're doing this and they're messing around and this guy said, "Oh, Brother Tom, must have a powerful message for us tonight because Satan's intervening." And I'm thinking, nope, you just bought some cheap stuff. That's the problem. If you buy junk, you get junk. We don't have tubes anymore. Got nothing to do with Satan, you're cheap. That was the problem.
There was a world famous evangelist, I won't give you his name, who's on television one night and he said, "Satan was out to get me today." And he said, "Really, what happened?" He said, "Well, I got a bike for one of my grandkids and I'm riding this bike and I'm riding it and I decide to go faster and faster and faster and now I'm going down a hill and I'm going faster and faster and faster and all of a sudden I realize this didn't have brakes, it had hand brakes and I had never used those before and I'm going faster and faster and faster and now I didn't know what to do but now there's a street coming the other way and I put on these brakes and I move over and it throws me off into the grass. Satan was really out to get me today." And I'm thinking, Satan doesn't need to get you. If you're dumb enough to get on a bike and go as fast as you can and you don't know how to stop it, why would Satan waste time with you? He doesn't need to get you. You're dumb.
The More Dangerous Extreme
So we can go to that. That's where everything Satan and Satan and in a minute something doesn't work at Satan. Let me give you the other extreme and I think it's even more dangerous. Eighty percent, last survey I saw, eighty percent of people who identified themselves as born again Christians said they did not believe Satan was real. Now think about that.
You know, you watch these scary movies and all of a sudden you got somebody and they know the enemy's coming and so they're closing the windows and they're locking the doors and they're all ready. That's scary. But the ones that are really scary is when they're in there and the lady's doing the dishes and she's looking out the window and she doesn't know there's anybody there and they show the ah, ah. That's scary. Or when the doors are open and the windows are open and you're just sitting there reading a book and there's the enemy and you don't know. That's even more scary than when you know he's coming.
So, eighty percent of people who identify themselves as born again Christians don't understand that they are in a battle against a roaring lion, an angel of light, a subtle serpent who is out to destroy you. There is a Satan and he is real. His desire is that you'd never come to Christ in repentance and faith. And once that you do, his desire is that all you do would discredit you and the cause of Christ. He is a subtle serpent. He will come. He will lie. He will give you all sorts of things. So beware.
Our Weapons for Battle
Put on the full armor of God. And of course, Paul tells us a little bit what that is. It has to do with prayer and it has to do with the word, the sword of God. The only offensive weapon we have is the sword of God, the word of God. That's why we need to know that word. What does it say? What does it mean?
In difficult times. I've been around enough to know that in a room like this, you probably have a couple hundred people in it, in a room like this, you have so much pain, so much hurt, so much hardship. How do you survive in the middle of that when the world around you doesn't make sense? You have to go to the things you know. You have to go to the word of God. In a world that's constantly changing, you stand firm on the word.
Boy, you had a great year and a great time if you understand that your victories exceed your defeats. Here you go. If you're finishing as strongly as you started, Paul said, I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I hung on till the end. We tend, in the Christian
community, it seems to me, to emphasize starting more strongly than we emphasize finishing. We have all sorts of campaigns for evangelism, and we love to go out and have people come to Christ in repentance and faith, but then we often drop them. There's not near the concern there.
There's a guy who speaks up at this conference center. His name is Bob Craning. Many of you know Bob. Bob's about 68, 69 years old. Bob actually had a heart attack not long ago, but I had dinner with Bob probably just before Christmas, and I said, "So what are you working on?" He said, "Here's my desire. My desire is to finish strong. I want to be used by God right up until the end. I want to put my energies and my time and my effort into something that makes a difference, and I don't want to blow it as I go out the door. I don't want to mess it up at the very end." What Bob was saying was, he has fought the good fight, and he wants to finish the race, whether it's another year or 10 years or 20 years, he wants to go out with people saying yes.
The Discipline of Running the Race
Again, from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, he writes this: "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets a prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize." He's trying to build an analogy here between the race and the games at Corinth. He's writing to the church at Corinth. Second only to the Olympic Games, the games in Athens, were the games in Corinth. These were highly competitive athletic people. So he's using this imagery.
He said, you know, when runners run in a race, they all run, but only one gets a prize. Now that's where the analogy breaks down a little bit, because us as Christians, we all get a prize. He said, "Everyone who competes in the games go into strict training, and they do it to get a crown that will not last. We do it to get a crown that will last forever." When they won a crown, when you won an event in those games, you got three things. Number one, you got a lifetime exemption from income tax. Number two, your children were exempt from being drafted into the army. And number three, you had hero status in the land. So here's what he's saying. He's not saying that they competed for something that was insignificant. He's just simply saying, they go into strict training to get a crown. It has very significance, but it's temporary. It won't last. It's temporary.
"Therefore, I do not run like a man running aimlessly or fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it a slave so that after I preach to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." What he's saying is, there's discipline here. There's discipline in what we do.
The Need for Hard Work and Discipline
I have a friend who, I love to introduce him to people this way. I love to say, he won a silver medal in the 1968 Olympics, and that is true. So I will introduce him. I'll say, "This is Charlie. Charlie won a silver medal in the 1968 Olympics." Here's what drives him crazy. He also won four golds. So it sounds valuable. I won gold too, but I'd love to do that too. And Charlie was a swimmer in Mexico City.
Charlie's got a son who never really swam much and decided he wants to be a swimmer. And a lot of that is really genetic and build. I mean, this is not a swimming build right here. This is a sinking build. This is a shot put build. That's what I got. And I'm the put. That's what it is.
I said, "How's he doing?" And he said, "You know what, it's interesting. He is swimming so hard. He's working so hard. He doesn't have the stroke down, but he is ranked, and he's been swimming for a year, he's ranked like seventh in the country already. He just got it. And he's just working so hard," which is what Charlie did. Charlie said, "I had a nice body for it, but I just worked harder than anyone else." See, that's what it takes in the Christian life is discipline.
I talked to a guy the other day, and he said, "I've started eating correctly and working out." I said, "Really? What are you eating?" And he said, "Well, I got my wife this cookbook, this health food cookbook." And I said, "Well, what is she making?" And he said, "Well, she really hasn't made anything yet." I said, "Alright." And he said, "Well, I haven't really been there yet."
When you aren't eating correctly and working out, there's a big difference between buying a cookbook and eating correctly. Or between buying a membership to the gym. That gym's counting on the fact you're never going to be there. When you go into our gym in January, you got to wait for machines. But all you got to do is be patient because by February, it's a ghost town again. Paul's saying, you've got to discipline yourself. You've got to work and work and work to discipline yourself.
Keeping the Faith
And then, he says this, "I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith." There is an important word here. It's this definite article, the word "the." Paul doesn't say, "I kept a faith," he says, "I kept the faith." He's speaking of a body of truth. What Paul is saying is, I received from the Lord a body of truth, and I passed that body of truth onto you. Paul says, I kept that faith.
Interestingly enough, Jude writes, in Jude 3 and 4, and says something similar. He says this: "Dear friends, although I was eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write to you and urge you to contend for, see the phrase again, the faith." It's the same phrase. To contend. That word contend is a word we've already seen this morning. It was translated struggle. It means hand-to-hand combat for the faith.
The Real Enemy
Now here's what's interesting. Who's the enemy? Boy, if you go to most Christian circles and say, "Who's the enemy?" And they're going to say the ACLU, the liberal left, the democrats, the republicans, big business. Jude says, "Here's the enemy. This is really scary." Contend for the faith that was once and for all entrusted to the saints for certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They're
godless men who changed the grace of our God into license for immorality and denied Jesus Christ our only sovereign Lord. Here's what Jude says. The enemy's not out there. The enemy's not Disney. The enemy is a group of men who have slipped in among you. They're in pulpits. They're leading Sunday school classes. They're teaching at conference centers. They're in the choir. They're board members.
See, there's the real danger. As long as there's enemies out there and they're persecuting the church, we'll do fine. As long as there's persecution coming in from the outside, we'll be okay. As long as there are governments and entities and personalities that want to attack the church and persecute the church, we'll be fine. Here's where we're vulnerable. We're vulnerable to those who slip in among you.
The State of the Modern Church
Now, I don't know your background, so I know this can be very dangerous. And the last thing I want to do is offend you. But it's important that you get this. The faith that is preached today in many churches has no resemblance to what Paul preached. We are at a very dark time, my friend. And we're at a dark time because we've had it so good so long.
There's a big battle about whether we should have prayer in school. And I don't say this to offend you. I don't think it matters. That's just me. I don't think it matters. Why do you want a pagan teacher leading your kids in prayer? What difference does that make? Your kids can pray in school all day long if they want. But the more we sell this out, the more we take our Christian faith and make it more adaptable to more people in the world who are in real jeopardy of losing truth.
That's what I've discovered. I've discovered that there's places where I go where when I go in they say, you can't say this, and you can't say this, and you can't say this. And I say, well, I'll say this to you. Goodbye, my friend, because I've got nothing left to say. It's to contend for the faith.
Two Dangerous Distortions
Now here's what we watch out. They do two things. They turn grace into license. I am a huge grace guy. I love grace. If it weren't for grace, I wouldn't be a believer, and neither would you. But there is also obedience.
We had a gal in one of our studies, and she was all excited she was going out on a date. She had been married and was divorced four years before. She was married to a music minister who left her for another gal. She hadn't dated for four years. She's hurt. She kind of had it right in this guy for about six months. He's a teacher of a large Sunday school class in a big Baptist church in Phoenix.
He comes up, and he asks her out on a date. They go out on a date. They have a nice date. They come home, and he said, there's a lot of tension between us here. He said, this is a real tense moment. He said, why don't we just go upstairs and sleep together, because we know that's going to happen anyway. And she said, no, get out of here. She said to him, I thought you were a Christian. Listen to this. He said, I am, but I'm under grace. I'm not under the law. See how we turn grace into license?
I'll tell you, down in our neck of the woods, you have a lot of people that love to talk about grace, and I happen to be one of them. But they'll talk about grace and grace and grace and grace and grace and never talk about obedience and faithfulness.
The other thing they do is they deny the deity of Christ. They mess around with this. Mormons are great at this. The Mormons will use Jesus Christ, put it right in the title of the place, but when you talk to them about Jesus, same words, different dictionary.
Boy, you are doing well if you understand that you are in a battle for the faith.
Anticipating His Return
Here's the last thing and then we've got to go. Do you anticipate the return of Christ? Paul said this, "Now there is in store for me a crown of righteousness with the Lord, the righteous judge will award me on that day, and not only me, but also all who have longed for His appearing." Do you long for His appearing?
I think for many of us, this earth and this world has become so comfortable, we really don't want to leave it. We're kind of sitting around saying, I've got a new palm pilot, I've got a new computer, I've got a new SUV, I've got a new camper, I'm eating salmon, they've got fly-bys, they've got parades, why would I want to go to heaven? Isn't that true? You know it's true.
About the only time you hear somebody say, "Oh Jesus, come quickly." Well, if you look at the calendar, it's always April 14th that they say it. Once they come the 16th, they go, "We've got that taken care of. You blew it, it didn't come yesterday, don't come at all."
Book of Revelation at the very end, "Behold, I'm coming quickly. Here I come." Now, when He says quickly, we need to understand that a day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is a day with the Lord. So when He says, "I'm coming quickly," we're going, man, it's been two thousand years, He's going, it hasn't even been two days yet.
Our True Home
Again, let me read to you from Max Lucado. He writes this: "Unhappiness on earth cultivates a hunger for heaven. By gracing us with deep dissatisfaction, God holds our attention. The only tragedy then is to be satisfied prematurely, to settle for earth, to be content in a strange land. We are not happy here because we are not at home here. We are not happy here because we are not supposed to be happy here. We are like foreigners in this strange world. And you will never be completely happy on earth, simply because you were not made for earth. Oh, you will have moments of joy, you will catch glimpses of light."
You will know moments, even days of peace, but they simply do not compare with the happiness that lies ahead. That's our home. As I get a little bit older, I'm starting to see this. Larry Wright, my mentor I mentioned, died last October. I'm starting to know a lot of people who have gone ahead. All of a sudden, it's becoming clear to me that I'm going to be more at home in heaven than I am on earth, pretty quick.
That's the way it was supposed to be. There's supposed to be in you this dissatisfaction with this world and the things that are in it. Paul writes this in Philippians 1:21: "For to me to live is Christ, to die is gain. I'm hard pressed in both directions, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, for it's much better." Paul's saying, I don't know whether I want to be here or there. Do you hunger and thirst like that?
Take Inventory of Your Life
Here's what I challenge you to do. I want you to take a look at your life. And I want you to ask how you're doing. I want you to evaluate it based on these questions we looked at. Not those first ones. Those first ones are important. If you were making $50,000 a year and now you're making $15,000, I know that's hard. I'm not diminishing that.
But I'm saying it's much more important that you contend for the faith than you become the CEO. That's what I'm saying to you. It's much more important for you that God is preparing for you a place in heaven than you getting a new place that you can redecorate here. That's what I'm saying to you.
So now how are you doing? After you take that inventory. When we get together tonight at 7, what I want to do is give you a challenge on how you can take your life and make it a life that's even better. Some things that you can do. Really basic things. Not difficult things. Things that you can do.
Making Your Life Better
So if your life is a 7, I think we can show you how to make it an 8. If it's a 3, to make it a 4. That's what we want you to do. You look at your life.
Let me give you one last warning. Please, don't be evaluating the life of the person that came with you. Ladies, this is not a time to stick it in his face. Gentlemen, go ahead and stick it in hers though if you can. That never happens, but if you could, go ahead. You get that? Tonight then, we're going to give you some positive things you can do. I'm going to ask you to become something that's rarely associated with the Christian faith. We'll do that tonight.
Prayer
Father, we look at this, and we pray that we would answer, we're doing fine. God, we pray that our life is bringing honor and glory to You. God, thank You. Thank You for loving us enough to put us in a place where at least we can hear that there are issues for us to settle. God, let us fight the good fight and finish the race and keep the faith. God, let us live with anticipation of Your coming again.
Help us understand the value of time and help us understand the very process we're going through. God, use this to open our eyes to honestly look at our heart. We pray that in Christ's name.