Develop A Lifelong Passion For Learning

Tom Shrader emphasizes that following God's Word requires more than just believing it—we must become lifelong learners. He outlines five principles: learning marks wisdom, enables loving God with our minds, is essential for spiritual growth, requires discipline, and occurs in various ways. Using Paul's examples of soldier, athlete, and farmer from 2 Timothy 2, he challenges believers to be disciplined in studying Scripture and understanding their culture to effectively engage the world around them.

“There is no way you're gonna love God if you don't know him.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: How Do I Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2006)

Recorded: 2006 at Cannon Beach Conference Center

Duration: 57 min

Themes: learning, wisdom, discipline, growth, studying, understanding, knowledge, maturity, new believer, struggling with discipline, student, teacher, navigating secular culture, young adult, mentor, seeking spiritual growth

Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Timothy 2:15, Acts 17:16-28, Proverbs 9:9, Matthew 22, Philippians 3:4-11, Ephesians 4:32, Ephesians 5:16

Theological Themes: biblical authority, scripture study, spiritual growth, sanctification, discipleship, biblical literacy, hermeneutics, worldview

Full Transcript

It's good to see you. Good to see an additional group from last night. That would tell me something. We had a handout we did last night. We said we're going to need that all week. There were some extras back there. If you were here this morning and did not get a handout last night, why don't you raise your hand and one of the guys will get those to you.

I love to listen to the songs that we sing and just see if there's something in there that jumps out at me. And there always is. Singing "God is an on-time God." And then a little verse in one of the songs we sang in our worship time is, speaking of God, "You give and You take away." It talks about the sovereignty of God.

God's Perfect Timing

When we say God is an on-time God, we mean He's on time—now this is very important—on His schedule, not on my schedule. Not on time when I say, "Okay, this is what I need. I need it right now. This seems right. Seems like this is the proper time and place. I'll wait another week or so, but this seems like the right time." And God is an on-time God on His schedule.

Jesus was born at just the right time. Christ died at the appointed time. This whole earth runs on God's schedule, not ours. He gives to us, He takes away. There are times He blesses. He blesses us with prosperity and things. There are times that He blesses us with hardship, suffering, and difficulty. And the reason is He's God and we aren't. And we learn that as we work our way through even the studies that we're going to look at this week.

The Bible as God's Infallible Word

So we started last night and we said, one point sermon. And that is that the Bible is the infallible word of God. Not that the Bible contains the word of God, but the Bible is the word of God. We looked at 2 Timothy 3 last night, verse 16. And we said that the Bible is good for teaching or for doctrine, for reproof, for correction.

That's really an important word. Only time we see it in the New Testament, it means to set in its right place. It's as if we have something here that's tipped over, we restore it to its proper, dedicated place. That's correction. And then for training in righteousness. In other words, the Bible tells us what's right, what's not right, how to get right, and how to stay right.

That becomes at the core, really, of most discussions that I have with people. Especially when I'm talking to people who would not want to sit in a meeting like this, they would not share this. We're not talking about just theological differences. We're talking about a whole worldview. They would look at the scripture and they would say, "Well, it may contain the word of God, it may have some truth in it, but so does this and so does that." We have to be really careful.

The Danger of Bad Teaching

It seems to me we live at a time, and this is my perception, when there's a lot of bad teaching going around. And almost always when you kind of get into this bad teaching, you'll find at the core, and you now see it having a major denominational things. You'll see things going on. You're going, "How can that be?" I'll tell you exactly how it is. They all of a sudden have a distorted view of the word of God. And you know what? You can be really smart and do that.

The Jefferson Bible: A Cautionary Tale

I don't know if you've ever seen one of these. It says the Jefferson Bible. You ever seen one of these? This is what Thomas Jefferson did. Thomas Jefferson took the New Testament, or took the Gospels, I should say, took the Gospels, and Jefferson did what maybe at times you'd like to do, and that is he took out the parts he didn't like.

Now, Thomas Jefferson is a brilliant mind. Remember the old story of John Kennedy sitting one night with these great minds. Remember his cabinet was the best and the brightest. And apparently Kennedy said, "Never has there been so many great minds dining in this room since Thomas Jefferson ate here alone." If you go to Monticello, you'll actually see it where Jefferson arranged two Bibles there, and you will see that he cut and he pasted, and he created what he calls the Jefferson Bible.

In some of his correspondence, he writes about it. Here's what he says when he's all done with this: He said, "There will be remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I've performed this operation for my own use by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book and arranging the matter which is evidently His"—in other words, which is obviously His, so I'm making some judgments on what isn't His—"what is evidently His, as easily distinguished as diamonds in a dung heap."

Removing the Supernatural

So he goes on, and here's what we find out from Jefferson, this brilliant man, is he had a real problem with anything that was supernatural. So if you get to the Jefferson Bible, what you see is all the miracles are gone. All the signs and wonders are gone. What he has is a great moral code. Jefferson would say, "I would follow this moral code." He calls it the greatest ethic ever produced.

Mahatma Gandhi, interesting man. Gandhi is a man who said this. He said, "I read the Gospels every day. I follow the teaching of Jesus Christ. However, I refuse to believe that Jesus or any other man died in my place." See, it's not the teachings of Christ in and of themselves that we follow. We talked about it last night. It's the doctrine that's crucial and important.

If you take the Jefferson Bible, and now, here you go, you take out all the miraculous, all the supernatural, all—here's a phrase—all the God stuff. You take out all the God stuff. Let me read you the last verse of the Jefferson Bible: "They laid, there they laid Jesus and rolled a great stone to the door, the sepulcher, and departed." That's the end.

All you have is the death of Christ. There is no resurrection of Jesus because we don't believe in the supernatural. We don't believe in miracles. It is so important for us, and that's why I come back to it again and again...

Again and again, we must understand that the Bible is the word of God. God said it, that settles it. It's done. It's a done deal. God has spoken.

Now, if we think this through logically, which we're not prone to do, but if we were to think this through logically, we'd go something like this. If the Bible's the word of God, then I ought to what? Follow it. If I'm going to follow it, what has to happen? I'm going to have to read it. Somewhere in here, I'm going to have to read it. I'm going to have to study it. I'm going to have to meditate on it. I'm going to have to spend time in it. In other words, I'm going to have to learn it.

So look at your outline. Last night, point number one, we established the Bible as the final authority in our life. You and I can go over here to the coffee shop. We can disagree about whatever the issue is. You say this, I say that. But if the Bible says it, that's it. That settles it. That's the final authority.

The Foundation: God's Word as Final Authority

So when we're trying to figure out whatever the issues are, we understand a timeless God doesn't produce dated material. So I better get into that word. That's why it's important. Do you understand that?

So when somebody's talking to you about, have you studied the word? Have you read the word? Have you meditated on the word? As you work your way through Psalm 119, God's word comes back again and again and the psalmist says, I delight in the word of the Lord. I meditate on the word of the Lord. There's these pictures of eating and devouring and just immersing myself in the word of the Lord. Why? So I'll know Him, so I'll know how to live. So He'll fill my heart. He'll fill my mind. So I want to learn.

The Progressive Journey of Faith

Step two in our outline is to develop a lifelong passion for learning. Now look ahead to tonight. Once I now have studied it, established it, learned it, now I have to make godly decisions. See the progression? That's what I want us to be. At the end of this week, I want us to go through that progression.

So now that I've made these decisions, there's a confidence in my life. I don't have to be afraid. Now my faith is part of my life. Now the invisible God is seen in me. Now when He says, be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, all of a sudden I understand. That's not theory. That's what I'm supposed to be—distinct, different, noticeable, not odd, by the way, distinct and different.

I speak the truth boldly. I've learned to be satisfied in a world that has an insatiable appetite for things they don't really need. I rejoice in the freedom that I have on the cross. I expect suffering. We don't run from suffering. We expect it. It's part of life. You're not exempt from it. And then in the midst of all of this, I thirst to be renewed day by day. So that's what we're going to look at.

Five Points About Learning

Here you go, point number two today: develop a lifelong passion for learning. Let me do something that's a little bit different for me. Let me give you my five points now, then we'll come back and we'll work our way into each one of them. And if you're from a Reformed background, these five points should be encouraging because there's five of them.

Number one: learning is the mark of a wise person. Number two: learning allows me to fulfill the great commandment. Number three: learning is essential to spiritual growth. Number four: learning most often results from discipline. In other words, it's not an accident. And number five: learning occurs in a variety of ways. Lots of ways to learn.

A Personal Struggle with Writing

I am a poor writer. I have this desire to try to put some thoughts on paper. I have a couple of things that I do that I think in terms of talks and times that I spend that are really good. And I have people constantly say to me, you need to write a book. There's a problem with it. I can't write. I write poorly. It doesn't flow.

Susan and I spent the first eight days of the month at 7,000 feet—now we're at sea level, but we were up in the mountains. And part of what I was trying to do was gather some thoughts together. So I wrote some things and I gave them to her. And I said, you know what? They're just not very good, are they? And she said, you're right, they're not very good. And what she was saying is the ideas are fine, but you just don't express them well.

Well, one of the things that I've thought about doing is to say, maybe I just need some skills. Maybe I need to take a class. So I grabbed a catalog from our local community college, and here's what it said. It said, continuing education. And I said to myself, that's redundant. Education by its nature for us is an ongoing, continuing process.

The Information Explosion

Now, let's separate wisdom and learning and understanding from just knowledge itself. Now, I'm going to give you just a whole bunch of stuff here. Don't try to write it down. Don't need to write it down. Just let it sink in there.

If you grab a copy of the weekday—not the weekend, not Sunday—the weekday New York Times, if you hold in your hands a copy of the weekday New York Times, it contains more information than the average Londoner would have experienced in his entire life if he lived during the 17th century. That's an amazing number.

Now, over the last 15 years, we have learned more than the previous 5,000 years of our existence, and the information we have, we could measure it quantitatively, is doubling, they say, every five years. I don't know how they figure this stuff out. Here's a statistic I love. If you were to quantitatively measure it, if you took all the information that existed in the world from the beginning

of time until 1845, and you stacked it up, it would be the equivalent in this scale of one inch. If you took the information we've learned from 1845 to 1945, it would be two inches. If you took 1945, I think that was the year that this was found, from that day till now, the size would be a foot, two feet. It would be the size of the Washington Monument. That's how fast information is coming at us and our ability to process it.

We have more data now on a leaf. These are fake, but if it was real, if I were to take this leaf off, we have more information now on that singular species of leaf than existed in the entire world in 1945 about everything. The first real computer that we can talk about was produced in 1944. It was the size of an 18-wheel truck. It weighed the equivalent of 17 automobiles. It took 144 watts of power to power it up, and it calculated about 5,000 equations a second.

You take that little laptop, or Jeff was just showing me his little electronic Bible that he has now. You take that little electronic Bible, that little chip that's in there weighs a fraction of a size of a pack of sweet and low, runs on virtually no power, and does millions of equations each second. You take those old computers that you're now giving away, but nobody will take them, you have more computing power in that than NASA had at the time that it sent Neil Armstrong to the moon.

When you go to a birthday party, and you give somebody that little card, and they open it up, and it says, "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you," and then when everything's gone, you just throw it in the trash, you've thrown away more calculating power than we had in the whole world in 1944. It is an amazing speed at which things are happening.

The Pace of Technological Change

The first mechanical robot in terms of production line was introduced in 1961. By 1982, there were 30,000 in use. Today, there are over 40 million mechanical robots being used. When the first George Bush left office, George Herbert Walker Bush, there were 55 websites. There are now 40 million.

Things are changing so fast, so quickly. And with change comes uncertainty. So we're hesitant to change. But with change now, we have problems. Problems require solutions, solutions need to be implemented, and to be implemented, it demands what? Change, and change starts the whole cycle all over again. It's an amazing world that you and I live in.

The Challenge to Understand Our Culture

I want to challenge you obviously to know the word of God, but I want to challenge you to understand the culture and the world you live in. I'm walking across campus one day and there's this 13-year-old kid, happens to be a boy, smiling ear to ear, happy as could be, and I'm thinking something's incredible happened in this kid's life. Said, "Hey man, what's going on?" He said, "I'm just doing good." I said, "You look like you're doing great, what happened?" Here's what he said. He said, "I just got an email from my grandpa."

That grandpa would take the time to understand the technology, which by the way, if you're one of those that say, "I don't want to mess around with a computer," I am a picture boy for computer illiteracy. But if I can do it, you can do it. To send an email is nothing more than type, push, send, click. And I will tell you, grandma, grandpa, you will connect on a level you can't even imagine with these kids when they understand, not only do you want to communicate with them, but you want to communicate with them on their level, their schedule, their time, their way. It's just a whole different world.

If you want to sit on the sidelines and say, "Well, you know, I remember the good old days. I remember the good old days." Session 12, when we talk about my dad's death, I'm going to talk about the good old days. But let me tell you why. There's some stuff that wasn't so hot about the good old days too. And you know what? The good old days are gone, my friend.

Choosing Relevance Over Irrelevance

If you want to cling to them, you are going to be irrelevant. Listen now, not because you want to be, you've just chosen to be. You've chosen to sit by the sidelines and watch the world go by and say, "You know what? It's changing so fast, you can't teach an old dog new tricks." Yes, you can, Fido. Jump up on your back feet. We're going to teach you something brand new.

Is there a lot of stuff in this world that's yucky? Amen. Lots of bad stuff. But this is the world you live in. We'll talk about this, and this becomes the basis really for the next two or three sessions together. But you can't experience and fulfill the great commandment, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and the great commission, go and be. You can't do that if you don't encounter the culture.

Paul's Example in Athens

Open your Bibles to Acts chapter 17, if you would. There's a beautiful picture of one of the heroes of the faith doing exactly that. It's not really portrayed that way, but as you read it, it kind of jumps off the page at you. Acts chapter 17, Paul has arrived in Athens, and he's wandering his way around the city.

Acts chapter 17, verse 16: "Now, while Paul was waiting for them," He's waiting for Silas and Timothy to come to him, "His spirit was being provoked within Him as He was observing a city full of idols." So what happens to Paul is He's walking around this town. He's not running from the town. He's not intimidated by the idols. He's spending some time in the town. He's got some free time. He's waiting for the boys to come. What's He doing in the process?

Not sitting in His room, lamenting the takeover of the idols in the city. Not writing letters, not signing proposals and amendments and all that stuff. Go do it, fine. That's not what He chose to do. He didn't try to overthrow the government, wasn't messing around with it. He's walking through. He makes some observations. He's probably, I would suspect, saying to God, "Help me, use this. God, I don't know exactly what I'm doing here. I'm not an Athens guy."

Way, at this point, he's just gotten out of jail in Philippi. He's been beaten and stoned. We always have to stop when we say stoned and point out words change in meaning over time. It's not that Paul was going, "Hey, wow, man, that's cruel." They beat him, they took him to the edge of town. They threw rocks at him until they thought he was dead. Paul's got a rough deal going here.

He comes to Athens. What does he do? He does what an ambassador for Christ ought to do. He begins to look at the culture. He prays for an opening. All of a sudden, one comes up. Paul, these Greeks, they were wondering what was happening. Curious minds want to know. And so they invite Paul in.

Look at verse 22. Paul begins to speak: "Men of Athens, I observed you're very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription, 'to an unknown God.' Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you." Paul is there. What's he do? He tells us what I preach—Christ and Christ crucified. He's walking through the town in the course of the day.

Paul's Cultural Engagement Strategy

Look at verse 28. He begins to quote their own poets. He's walking through the town. He's making some notes. Maybe they're mental notes. Maybe he literally is writing them down. He's waiting for this opportunity. He comes into these guys and you know what he doesn't do? He doesn't do what he does with the Jews.

If he comes to the Jews, what does he say? "Well, let's flip to the Old Testament and talk about it." Flipping to the Old Testament isn't going to help you a lick with these Greeks. They couldn't care less. So what's he say? "You know what, guys? Here's what I saw. You're really religious."

Some historians suggest that at this point in time in history, there were 35,000 gods being worshiped in Greece. One has said kind of tongue in cheek, it was easier to find a God in Athens than a person. And Paul, all of a sudden, he stops and he says—and I can just see this happening—I can see him in his mind going, "To an unknown God, wow."

He gets the opportunity and he says, "Guys, you know that statue down there to that unknown God?" Yeah, and they'd have no problem with it. Yeah. It's like we got 34,999 gods, but if we miss one, let's just throw up "to whom it may concern God." We'll catch you some way, God. And Paul says, "All right, boys, here's the deal. I want to talk to you about that God." And as he unfolds it, he comes to them in their culture. He doesn't compromise the word. And he starts to quote their poets, their songwriters.

Understanding Culture to Communicate Truth

I did a thing not long ago where I took one of Madonna's songs and spent about a half hour exegeting Madonna, which was an interesting experience probably for Madonna and me. But I'm just talking about this song and what she's saying. And I could watch the guys as I started going, "Oh my gosh, what's he doing? Why is he messing around with this?" And my point is, she's communicating to a whole culture. And here's what she's saying: I tried to be a boy, I tried to be a girl. I tried to be rich, I've tried it all. And I'm still miserable. I've got an airplane, I've got a maid. I've tried it all.

Well, isn't that the message that we bring to the world? We go, "You know what? You've tried almost everything." Now, we don't say try Jesus like we'd say Colgate or Crest. We're saying, "Here's your problem. Your problem is you aren't created to be filled with something you don't really need. You think you do. You think if you have that..."

Isn't that amazing? Boy, I can remember the angst at beginning the whole process of dating. "Oh my, I don't know. If I ask her out, would she go with me? Oh, if she'd just go out. If she'd just say—oh my gosh, if she'd go out for a second date." Not many did. "If you go out for a second date, if you go out for a second, this would really be incredible. Oh, if she'd just go steady. I'd have my class ring, would you? Would you wear my class? Oh, would you wear my class ring? Oh, if I could just—I'd be so happy. If she would just—oh, would you go steady with me? Would you be my girl?"

And that's what we do. Then we say, "Oh, if I could just get him to ask me to marry him. Oh, if I could just get married. And oh, if he'd just leave me, I'd be happy." And we go through this whole circle. If I get that shirt, if I get those pants, if I get this job, if I get to go to Cannon Beach, if I get, if I get. And then ultimately when we get there, we're miserable because it doesn't do what you're expecting it to do. And Paul walks right into that because he understands mankind.

The Missionary Mindset

We have a team from our church that we are just sending to Morocco. First guy went in about six months ago. You know what they're doing? You know this. Some of you are missionaries. They have to learn the language, have to learn the customs, have to learn where to say what to eat, how to eat. And we as a church come together and go, "Yes, this is what we need to do. It's really important for him to get over there, understand and engage the culture."

But you and I need to understand, we in a sense are the missionaries or ambassadors here. It's just as important for you to understand the culture. You have to understand the world you live in. You don't just sit out there and lob bombs at it. It's really important.

This is really significant. Christian, the word, is not an adjective. It's a noun. We use it as an adjective. Christian bookstore, Christian comic, Christian speaker, Christian music, Christian TV, Christian conference center, Christian. No, it's not an adjective, it's a noun. It's a person, it's who you are. You're to engage the culture.

And one of the things that is always unique about a place like Cannon Beach, especially on a Sunday, is you have young people and old people. I don't care where you are in that age spectrum. It's irrelevant to me. You can be a vibrant member of the body in Christ, influencing your culture if...

Learning Is A Mark of Wisdom

Number one: learning is a mark of wisdom. We can talk about knowledge all we want. We got that figured out. There's a lot of knowledge. I love these guys that are really, really smart. They can build me a car, but they have no clue where they put the keys. I don't need that. I need both. I need knowledge and wisdom.

Proverbs 9:9, "Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser. Teach righteousness and he will increase in his learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." When we talk about wisdom, what we're talking about is a perspective. It's beginning to see the world as God sees it, not as you and I see it.

You and I still live in a country that somewhere, numbers vary, somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million babies are killed every year. Think about that. You live in a country where at least some states, and who knows where we'll end up, would like to ordain and sanction same-sex marriage. Homosexuality is a perversion. So is adultery, by the way. So is premarital sex. Those are all perversions of God's plan. We love to beat the one up, but we tend to ignore the other. Those awful people. But here you are engaged in the same thing. It's a perversion of God's plan.

We don't have to wonder. Do you think God in heaven is going, "Oh, you know that homosexual thing? I gotta rethink that. Or that premarital sex? Yeah, that was for a different day and age." No, a timeless God doesn't produce dated material. So here it is. I get the mind of God. I want wisdom. I need to see things as God sees them.

He's an on-time God. He is a God with His schedule, with His agenda, with His plan. And here's His plan. Here's His plan for dating. Here's His plan for parenting. Here's His plan for friendship. Here's His plan for running a business. Here it is. And it isn't changing.

The number one thing I need to know about learning is that learning is the mark of a wise person. It's not just the increase of knowledge. I want to get up here and say to you, it's really important that you learn. It's really important that you read. It's really important that you watch television. I know nobody says that. But it's really important that you see it, that you get news, that you know what's happening in the culture, that you're smart, that you're stimulated, that your mind is growing. Those are really important things. Now, I gotta know what to do with them. That's wisdom.

Learning Allows Me To Fulfill The Great Commandment

Here's the second point. Learning allows me to fulfill the great commandment. Matthew 22, Jesus is speaking. The Pharisees have heard Jesus and they ask Him a question. "Teacher, which of the great commandment of the law?" And He says this, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind." I think sometimes when we think of loving God, we think of our heart, but not of our mind.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, just for the record, not a Christian publication, says that the greatest mind that America ever produced, the greatest thinker, the greatest mind ever produced in America was Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards, some of you may not know. I've found that people tend to think he was a safety for the Seahawks. Others think that he's done a variety of things. He was a Puritan preacher in Northampton.

Just to give you a sense, every once in a while when you think you're really going to be somebody and you think maybe you're special, Jonathan Edwards, the greatest mind America ever produced. Susan and I one day are finding, we're in Northampton. We're taking a week and we're driving through New England. We have no schedule. And I see a sign that says Northampton. I think Jonathan Edwards. We're driving through, I see Edwards Church. This is Edwards Church. We're sitting in where there's a guy out cleaning. And I said, "Hey man, we're from Phoenix and we're never going to get here again probably. Can we get in?" And he's the maintenance guy. "Can we get in and see it?" And he said, "No." And I said, "Really?" And he said, "No. No chance." I said, "Was this the church where Edwards preached?" And he said, "I don't know." He left. There's a plaque right there that says Jonathan Edwards preached. This guy's been polishing this plaque. So if you think you're going to be somebody, you aren't.

Jonathan Edwards, the greatest mind that America ever produced. You know what he believes? Same thing you and I believe. He'd embrace the doctrinal statement at Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center. He's not some idiot. He wrote a book. He wrote several books. He wrote a book on free will that's important. But perhaps his greatest work is a book called Religious Affections. It's tough to read, so you need to get somebody that's updated it a little bit. I don't see merit in just slugging it out. I want to understand it.

Here's what Edwards says. He says this: you're never going to love God and have real affection for Him if you don't know Him. It took him 300 pages to say it, but that's what he was saying. It's the same true in relationship, isn't it? I mentioned to you last night when I first saw Susan. When I first saw Susan, my body was filled with lust for her. It just was. I mean, I just saw her. I saw her figure. I saw the way she smiled. It never even occurred to me that she might talk and we'd have a conversation. I wasn't even thinking about that. I couldn't have cared less.

And she could talk. And then here's what happened. Then we got engaged and then we got married. And somewhere in there, we said I love you and I love you and all that. And probably somewhere around the third or fourth year of our marriage, I probably really started

to really love her. And now I would say, she might debate it, but I would say that I love her more now than I ever did. And there's only one reason: I know her better. I know what she's going to say before she says it. And she'll say, no, you don't. And I'll say, yes, I do. And she'll say, I knew you were going to say that.

We just know. I just know her. I know what she's going to say. I know what she's going to look like. I know how she's going to respond. And rarely does she surprise me. But I learn more about her every day.

We were supposed to be here, some of you know, last summer, right about this week. We ended up canceling our entire summer last summer. In the last two years, she's had four surgeries, two bouts of chemotherapy, and radiation. And I've watched her. And what I feel for her now is totally different than what I felt that first day when she moved into apartment 201. But this is probably a lot closer to the real deal. And the difference is, I know her.

Knowledge Is Essential to Love

There is no way you're going to love God if you don't know Him. It's going to be some superficial, "yeah, yeah, rah rah, ha ha, God, God." You don't know Him. And you know what? That's going to fade away. Because you can't operate at that emotional pitch, that generated pitch where you have those feelings, that euphoria, everything's excited, and that's all. You can't live there. You can't stay there.

The only way you can sustain that is to make it become more sophisticated, which comes with knowledge. R.C. Sproul writes this: "God made us with a harmony of heart and head, of action of thought. The more we know Him, the more we're capable of loving Him. To be central in our hearts, He must be first central in our minds. Religious thoughts are a prerequisite to religious affection and obedient action."

There's no way. You can't just run on adrenaline. You have to know who He is.

The Importance of Doctrine

Here you go. Think of—and this is, I'm a big doctrine guy. Doctrine's really, really, really important. When I say doctrine and somebody goes, "boring," how can that—doctrine, theology, the study of the creator God—that's boring to you? You have an issue. Or you have a really crummy teacher. That's possible. Some guys have the ability to make this boring. I don't understand it, but they do. And if you're saying, "I'm one of them," I want to see you outside right after this. I'll punch you right in the face. Okay?

Here's the deal. Think about it. Just think for a second. Here, just this, just this one thing. Don't need a bunch of stuff. Just this one thought: "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

No, no, no, forget all this other stuff. Big old book, lots of stuff in there. Put it aside for now. While you were yet a sinner, Christ died for you. While you hated Him, while you despised Him, or worse yet, while you were apathetic or ambivalent, He died for you.

A Personal Revelation About the Cross

I hadn't been a Christian very long when somebody said—you know how you have all those little clichés that stick around and I don't know where they come from or how they even survived, but they survived with guys like me repeating them, I guess. But this guy said this to me: "If you were the only person alive, Jesus Christ would have died for you." You ever heard that? Yeah. So I'm thinking, "Okay, that sounds good."

And I'm driving along one day, I'm thinking about this. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's think this through for a second. Let's role play this. If I was the only person alive and Jesus were going to die for me, then I would have had to have been the one to pound the nails in His hands, in His feet, to shove that spear in His side." Now it's got a whole—doesn't it mean something way different now to you? All of a sudden, not only am I the only guy alive and He's dying for me, I'm the one that's killing Him. Now it's different. While you were a sinner, Christ died for you.

When did He do it? He's an on-time God. He did it at His time, in His way.

The Practical Power of This Truth

So what difference does that make? Let me give you a practical difference. When I get to Ephesians chapter four, verse 32, it goes something like this: "Be kind, tenderhearted to one another, forgiving one another." How? How do we forgive one another? "Just as God in Christ forgave me."

See, if all of a sudden I understand that Jesus Christ died for me while we were yet sinners, my heart is filled with thanksgiving. My heart is filled with praise. I don't have to conjure up some emotion. It just comes spewing out of me. And beyond that, I now have the power to do something that I never had before.

Here was my phrase. I'll bet it was some of yours: "I don't get mad. I get even." And the message: "Don't mess with me." That was the message, and they got it.

All of a sudden, there's a—I don't do much very well. I really don't. I'm pretty good at some, lousy at others. I am a world-class, I think, forgiver. And the reason is, I really understand how much God has forgiven me.

The Passion and Understanding Sin

And the more I understand—like the movie, The Passion, you know, Mel Gibson, and whether it's got this or that or whatever, I don't know, doesn't matter to me. I went and saw it, and I can't stand blood and gore in movies, but that movie did not bother me a bit, and you know why? The blood and the gore had a context. And when they're showing that, and we understand this is a depiction, right? My guess is they kind of got it sort of close, but probably not bloody enough, gory enough, because you could still kind of recognize His face.

When I saw that, I for a moment said, "Oh my, that for me." And here's the other thing: that's what sin does. That's what I deserve, not for a moment, but for eternity. That just affects everything you think about. It affects how you view life. Christ died for me.

Learning Is Essential to Spiritual Growth

Here's the third point: Learning is essential to spiritual growth. One of the guys that I enjoy reading, I'd recommend this to you. You need to develop kind of an approved reading list, and authors, kind of approved authors, because what—

I observed that when I had not been a believer very long, I went to the Christian bookstore, and all the books that looked the best were the worst, and all the books that had this crummy old print and looked terrible and no marketing to them were the best. So I went to Larry, and Larry gave me an approved reading list of readers and authors. There were some guys on it, and one of them was Martin Lloyd-Jones.

I enjoy reading Martin Lloyd-Jones, but it's a little bit of work because he tends to teach in a repetitive nature, the same thing over and over again. Those introductions get a little repetitive, but here's a little snippet of Jones: "Let us never forget the message of the Bible is addressed primarily to the mind, to the understanding."

Paul's Spiritual Pedigree

Turn to Philippians chapter three, please. This is a great section of scripture. What Paul's doing there is giving you his pedigree or his resume. He said in verse four, "Although I myself might have confidence even more in the flesh." He's saying, "You think you're really orthodox? How about me?"

"I was circumcised," look at verse five, "on the eighth day." What that means there is not that Paul said, "Hey, mom, eighth day, we got to go get circumcised." He's talking there about his parents and his heritage. "Circumcised on the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law found blameless."

Here's what Paul's saying, and this is not a pejorative term: He's saying, "I'm a super Jew." You take what Judaism is, I embody it. It's my heritage, it's my background, I'm of the right tribe—the tribe of Benjamin. I'm a Pharisee. You want to talk about zeal? You want to talk about living your faith? I'm out there trying to eliminate the church. Paul's saying, "Listen, you want to take the law, all the prescriptions for being righteous before God that you find in the law? I've been there, done that."

The Surpassing Value of Knowing Christ

Here's his conclusion: "But whatever things were gain to me, those things I count as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord"—of knowing Him. The idea there is way beyond just intellectual knowledge. It talks about experiencing Him personally, attachment to Him.

He just keeps going in that same thing. Look at it: "Knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in Him." If you have a King James, it'll say, "I count them but dung." I count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in Him.

"Not having a righteousness of my own"—I couldn't clean my own act up, I couldn't do enough good things, righteousness wasn't in me. It wasn't derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. "All of this, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering," that I may have an attachment to Him, that I'm connected to Him.

Learning Takes Time

This idea of learning is essential to spiritual growth. All of a sudden, I grow in Him. Now, I'm going to tell you something that you don't like and I don't like. This takes—you want to guess the next word? Time. Time. It takes time.

We were in a room yesterday, and I'm hungry, which is not unusual, and I had this strange concoction that I like. I like peanuts with pretzels and cheese, and I mix them all together and just eat it. Well, we didn't have any pretzels, but I did have a bag of microwavable popcorn. I have a microwave in my bedroom. I put it in there, and in one minute and 43 seconds, I had popcorn.

I remember when my dad used to make popcorn. He had a popcorn popper, and first would go in the Crisco, and then they'd melt all that. Then the popcorn would go in. It was a little thing, and it would take forever. By then, we were long since lost interest in popcorn.

The Microwave Mentality

We live in that microwave age. Everything we want, we want it fast. Here you go: I go to McDonald's. When I go to McDonald's, I never—at least when I've been on my own—I've never been through a McDonald's drive-in window, never, for one reason. I want to go in. I want to look, and I will say to the guy, "Give me one of those blue things and a yellow thing." He'll start to ring it up, and I'll say, "Don't ring it up. Go get them and put them in the bag, because if you start to ring them up and somebody else buys it, I'm going to be waiting."

I go to McDonald's for one reason: fast food. I'm not going there for the dining experience. I'm not going there for the quality of it. They've killed like three cows to make these 28 billion hamburgers. I'm not going there for the food. I go to McDonald's for one reason—fast food. That's my life. That's the way I live.

Now I come to spiritual growth, and it takes time. Time. You know, we have that phrase, "It's aging like a fine wine." We could say this: "It's aging like a right relationship with Christ." It just takes time. That's why I have an extraordinary respect for older people—especially older people who are walking with the Lord.

People are just older younger people. They're no brighter, no smarter. They've just been around longer, and they can talk about the Depression. But if they've been walking with Christ, there's nothing like it. There is nothing like an 80-year-old guy or gal who's been walking with the Lord for 40, 50, 60, 70 years, and they can tell you stories that are amazing stories.

I'll tell you what, and this sounds really goofy I'm sure to most of you. I'll tell you where I'm going to be at 4:30 today - sitting right here watching that 30-minute movie. Not because it's going to be the greatest movie ever produced, but I'll tell you what I'm going to see. I'm going to see a story. Every time I walk out of this building, I look at that guy's face in that picture, and he makes me smile. I'm kind of wondering what that guy's all about, because he looks at me like he knows something I don't know, and that bothers me. You've got that look, doesn't he?

Here's what I want to hear this story. I want to hear what God does. I have not seen this movie before. I guarantee you it's going to be a story about God did this, and then God did this, and then God did this, and we didn't have any idea. We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't have a plan. God did this, dropped this. That's an amazing story.

Not so I go running out the door and think, well, if I do all these things, God's going to do all this. No, it's just to hear God work in somebody's life. That's a movie. I'll tell you what would be way better than that movie is if somehow she was sitting here in the front row and could tell you, and you've got people like that all around you.

It takes time, but you know what? I did a funeral the other day. I love to do funerals. I'm not the greatest at weddings. You'd want me to do your funeral is what you would want. The lady had died, and the husband wanted to speak, and he was a cool old guy. He's like 75, and he got up, and he said, "I want to thank my mentor," and he pointed to one of our staff guys who's 26. So we got a little hung up on the chronological age here. This is about age and years in Christ.

Learning Through Discipline, Not Just Action

Two more points really quickly. Number four: learning most often occurs from discipline, not by action. Look at 2 Timothy chapter two, and let me just point out something to you - it's pretty obvious just as you read it. We were in chapter three last night, and Paul's talking about scripture and all scripture's inspired by God, and he says in chapter two, verse 15, "Be diligent to prove yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth."

As he's building up to this, Paul is painting a picture. Paul's telling a story. Paul's giving them imagery they can get their arms around, and in chapter two, he uses three illustrations. Look at verse three: "suffer hardship with me as a good soldier." 2 Timothy chapter two, verse five, he talks about anyone who competes as an athlete. Verse six, he talks about the hardworking farmer.

There's some great imagery for your life and mine. When I think about a soldier or an athlete or a farmer, I think about discipline when I think of all three. When we talk about a soldier, it's a metaphor for warfare. You and I are in a battle against a real live enemy. Satan hates you, he wants to destroy you. If you're a Christian, he wants to somehow make you as absolutely impotent as you can be for the cause of Christ. If you're not a Christian, he wants to do everything he can to prevent that relationship from ever happening. We're a soldier, we're engaged in battle. You have an enemy, that's what the end of Ephesians chapter six, that's what it's all about. Put on the full armor of God.

The Discipline of an Athlete and the Endurance of a Farmer

You're an athlete. Now, when I think of an athlete, I think of discipline, determination, doing crunches, running. There's nothing to me more anathema to life than watching some guy out just running. I don't get it. He's just out running. Why? "Well, I enjoy it, and I'm training." For what? For the race.

You and I are athletes. We're to be disciplined, we're to train. Part of the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. We aren't just blowing like these papers in the wind, back and forth with every whim. I'm hungry, I eat, I this and that. No, there's a discipline.

And look at the phrase in verse six: "hardworking farmer." You might want to mark that phrase "hardworking." It means literally to labor to the point of exhaustion. Now, there's your autobiography. You are to be a soldier battling the enemy, a soldier battling as an athlete, battling with yourself, and as a farmer working to the point of exhaustion. You ought to be, as you are engaged in life, pooped. But it's a good pooped.

I teach - I don't anymore, we've changed our schedule, but I used to preach seven times on Sunday. And it's just a lot, I mean, it's hard to do. And at the end of the day, I would find myself pooped, but I would always say, "but it's a good pooped." It's to labor to the point of exhaustion. That's a picture of you.

Three Ways to Learn

One last point: learning takes place in a variety of ways. Make a couple of points here real quickly. You learn from classes or books or something. That's one way to learn. Another way to learn is by observation. And another way is by experience.

So I can learn by taking in information. I can learn by observation. One of the great things about my job is I watch people and I can learn from them. I can go, "Oh my gosh, don't do that. Oh, I wouldn't do that. Boy, that's stupid. That person did that, don't do that."

And then the third way to learn, but the tuition's a little high, is by personal experience. The stove is hot. Yes, it is. That's a way to learn. Those are three ways that I can learn.

Let me challenge you to be a learner and to tell you you live in a learning-friendly

The Right Equipment for Learning

First of all, you need the right equipment. This may sound really odd to you - you need a Bible that fits. I'm breaking in a brand new Bible this week, and this is scary for me.

When I changed golf clubs a couple years ago, it didn't make any difference, but I went out to the Ping factory and spent two hours hitting balls. They had computers on me measuring the angle at which the ball took off from the tee, the amount of rotation or spin in the ball, and the distance. Our objective - this will sound really stupid to you if you don't play golf, probably sounds stupid if you do play golf - was to make the ball bounce up and forward when it landed. The ball naturally just hits and rolls if the spin isn't right. After two hours of testing between the shaft and the head, I could take that ball and when it hit, you could see it would hit and go boom.

I spent two hours getting fitted for a golf club. You walk into a bookstore and just say, "I need a Bible, give me that one." You need to find a Bible that fits you. Now I'm a fan, though they're cumbersome and difficult, I'm a big fan of a study Bible. You need to find a Bible that fits.

Study Tools and Resources

You need to understand there are a lot of tools out there. You can get on the internet and just Google "Bible studies" and the first one or two that comes up is called Crosswalk.com. It is a wonderful site with all sorts of stuff you need.

There are objects called commentaries. Some of you have never even heard of them - that's okay. They're where a Bible teacher or scholar or theologian will take the Bible and add notes to it. Now these notes, you've got to remember, aren't inspired but they're helpful. There are tools out there.

There's a book I'm going to pitch to you. I wish I wrote it - I didn't - and I wish I was getting money for it - I'm not. It's called "Foundations of the Christian Faith" by James Montgomery Boyce. It's about 800-900 pages. If you read three pages a day, you get through it in a year, but it's a great reference book for you to have. There are millions of others.

Redeeming Your Time

Ephesians 5:16 - Paul says, "redeem the time." What does that mean? Don't waste the time. That means when I'm sitting in the car, I can be listening to praise music or teaching tapes.

I'm going to take one last thing away. I don't want to hear that you're a poor learner and reader. I challenge people every year to read a book a month, which they can't do and they don't do. But you have to be a reader.

Reading Great Books

Here's what that means, and this is really important. It means that you can't read good books anymore. You've got to read great books. You don't have time to read good books. You've got to be reading great books. It really matters what you're reading.

If you read a book a month for a year, that's 12 books in a year. 120 in a decade, 360 books you've read in 30 years. That's pretty impressive, isn't it? The average person who graduates - this is a Harvard study - the average person who graduates from college, get this now, this blows me away, never reads another book cover to cover in their life. Something like 60% of college graduates. I said, "That can't be right." I started talking to my friends that are college graduates - they don't read.

Your Commitment to Learning

Here's our close. Are you willing to discipline yourself to learn? Because it's not going to happen accidentally. If so, where are you going to start? Because you need a plan. And when are you going to start? You need to resolve these issues.

You don't need another conference just to come and sit and learn and have a good time. Those are all great things. But if all you're going to do is this and then drive back, I'm telling you, the residue of this will wear off like that. By the time I'm getting into Portland, Beaverton, I'm already angry with the morons driving around me. I'm not going to get very far into this thing if all I have is just enough.

But if what I do is walk away committed to discipline myself, God will use that to change your life.

Let me pray for you and we'll close. Father, thank You. Thank You for Your word so that we don't have to wonder what to study and that we need to learn and that You've taught us. God, I pray for the people that are here, especially for our guests this morning. We won't see them again this week, probably. We pray that this is a time that You would use in their life. God, thank You for Your Son, Jesus, who died so that we could have eternal life. And we praise You in His name. Amen.