Five Points
Tom Shrader presents five key points about the Christian life: salvation by grace, unbreakable union with God, freedom from sin's bondage, enduring life's trials, and fulfilling God's plan. He emphasizes that believers are saved by God, from God, for God, and challenges the audience to reject the busyness and materialism that crowds out their calling as ambassadors of reconciliation.
“God did not save you because there was anything in you that was intrinsically valuable - He saved you in spite of you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: September 2007
Recorded: 2007 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 1 hr 4 min
Themes: salvation, grace, freedom, trials, purpose, materialism, busyness, reconciliation, new believer, struggling with materialism, feeling overwhelmed, seeking purpose, young adult, pastor, navigating trials, busy professional
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Romans 8, Romans 12:2, Matthew 5, Acts 17:6, 1 Timothy 2:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:10, Ecclesiastes 5, 2 Timothy 2:4, Philippians 3:20
Theological Themes: salvation by grace, union with god, sanctification, becoming holy, divine sovereignty, gods glory, imago dei, image of god
Full Transcript
Five Points
Let me just read you another passage from this book. Let me give you the title again. The title is *I Am Not, But I Know I Am*. The author is a gentleman by the name of Louis Giglio. Giglio is spelled G-I-G-L-I-O.
When God made the universe, His goal was not to make a habitat for man, but rather a statement about Himself. As He fashioned earth, He was not simply acting as man's interior and exterior designer, creating a global environment we would all really love and enjoy. He was thinking mostly about Himself. He initiated the first ocean wave and carved out the earth's deepest canyon, forming the very dirt we call home. God intended that everything about it would point us back to Him.
When He created the first man and woman, He was not obsessed with the glory of the human race, but with His own glory. And it's there, everywhere, mysteriously woven in our DNA, the image stamp of the creator, allowing us to share unique intimacy with the Almighty and reflect His glory. Everything God does, He does for His own glory.
He approaches every decision with the question, what will bring the most attention and honor to my name in this situation? What will glorify me and make me look the very best? And then He does whatever that is. God is committed to Himself more than anything. God has determined that the story will remain about Him, concluding with the unending applause of heaven.
His purpose, preoccupation with His glory, is a river that no man can tame, a sovereign tide that makes pride-filled current, destructively massive as it is, seem like a desert trickle after a brief shower. As He did with Pharaoh, God will use the greatest pride in man to amplify His glory, ensuring in the end that every life and every tongue affirms His fame. To joyfully choose to make our lives count for His renown is to join His cause, to get on board with what He is already doing with or without us. In doing so, we make sure our lives count for what matters most while enjoying all the time the very best God has to offer, which is Himself.
Let's pray. God, this is about You. We pray we keep it that way. We will use stories. We will use Your word, and it's all to magnify You. God, as we leave this place and we begin to live life, let it be not about us, not even about our triumphs, not even about our sorrow or our pain. Let us talk more and more about You, and let our lives reflect Your work in our life. We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.
Conference Center Reflections
Well, boys, the only thing standing between you and lunch and the Seahawks is me, so let's make this brief.
I love coming to the Conference Center. You saw the video. I had heard about Cannon Beach, but I had not been here until how many years ago, and this is a wonderful place, and I will tell you something special does happen in the summer, so I would encourage you.
I met last night, just had a great time. There's a couple of guys that I've met over and over again up here, and I had coffee last night with Dwight and his boys. Dwight has been coming to the Cannon Beach Conference Center for 49 years. Now, here's what you're expecting. You're expecting to see a real old man. Stand up so they can all look at you. You're very uncomfortable with this, I know. 49 years, and you know what he was talking about? He was talking about when he used to come, he remembers Mrs. McNeil would be over in that prayer chapel, and I say this to my shame, over in that prayer chapel every day before we would come in here for any sort of a conference. Amazing time. So this is a wonderful place. Please take advantage of it.
Thanks to the staff. Thanks to the band. Dave, the stuff that you have written and sung is incredible. I love it. It's unbelievable original stuff, and I appreciate it. It's always cool to meet the drummers because they're always the ones that are just a beat off themselves, so to meet them is always fresh. And then I'm going, let me speak for Joe, because Jeff put him down just a little bit, but you have no idea how hard it is to be a bass player and totally act as though you're void of personality. It's a very difficult thing to do. To be a bass player and to be just this side of comatose is not easy, and you do it well, Joe. Let's thank Joe for all he does.
Tying It All Together
I went home last night, and Susan said, how did it go? And I said, you know, I don't think very well. I was kind of all over the map, and I understand that. Hopefully you got something out of it. Many of you were gracious. I appreciate that. Let me tie this together today, put a real bow around this, and get us going.
I've got five points, which for a Calvinist is probably a good thing, and I have five points here that I think we've made.
Point One: We Are Saved by Grace
Number one, we are saved by grace. So we spent a whole bunch of time talking about grace, unmerited favor, that salvation is not about you and your work, never can be. You did nothing to earn God's pleasure. You'll never be good enough. You can't be. That's religion, that you're saved by grace, unmerited favor.
Those who have been around me hear the same thing over and over again, and I'm okay with that because I think it's really important. So that out of that comes this little phrase that I'm saved by God, from God, for God. So I'm saved by God. He does everything beginning to end. That's what grace is. Salvation has nothing to do with you, and the minute you try to make it about you positively.
That salvation is entirely about God. It's not about me, and it's very important. God did not save you because there—
was anything in you that was intrinsically valuable. He didn't save you because of you. He saved you in spite of you.
I saw a great t-shirt this morning that said, "I'm the wretch the song referred to." That's a great t-shirt. That's great understanding. This is not about having low self-esteem. We don't have low self-esteem at all. We just see ourselves as God sees us, which is really important. To see ourselves as God sees us, we have to see God as He really is.
Our Unbreakable Union with God
Here's the second point: our union with God is unbreakable, and His love for us is unconditional. That's a huge thing. Almost every relationship we're in, and maybe it is in fact every human relationship we're in, has some sort of condition attached to it. I'll love you if you'll be my kid. I'll be proud of you if you're my son, and I care for you as long as you are top in the class.
I did a commencement address for a new high school at home. There were four students in the graduating class, and I said, "This is my dream. I dreamt about being in this class because I could have finally been in the top five." There were wonderful kids, a little dinky school obviously, and it's just a wonderful place. I've seen us with our kids where we go, "That's my boy." Then he drops that ground ball that could have won the ball game, and now I'm not even talking to him. Stupid stuff like that.
We have all this conditional stuff. I love you at work if you can keep your desk organized. Then we come to God, and we bring those "ifs," and we wait for Him to respond with conditions, but there aren't any. There's nothing we can do to break that union. That's Romans 8. His love for us is unconditional. That doesn't mean we can do whatever we want to do. He still has discipline and all that stuff that goes with it, but you cannot out-sin God's grace and love for you. It is impossible to do.
Freedom to Be Who God Made You
Here's the third thing: as a result of this grace and His love, He has freed us from the bondage of sin. Its eternal consequence is hell, and its hold on us here. He has freed you to be the person God has created you to be. We are all different, and everyone loves to rejoice in the beauty of it. I guess it's beautiful, but I find it far more problematic than beautiful.
It is very frustrating to me that you all aren't like me, because it seems to me the world would be a far better place if you drove like me, and dressed like me, and talked like me, and thought like me. Things would just be better, wouldn't they? But we're all different, and in there comes the problem.
What one person really values, we see this in the body of Christ. I see it in the church. God wires us. He gives us this thing called a spiritual gift, and that spiritual gift really drives a lot of how we think and what we do. I'll be in my office, and I'm not a terribly organized person. I have an administrative assistant, which was kind of cool, because she was on staff three years before I met her, I think. I met her and said, "How are we going to do this?" She said, "What can I do to make your deal easier?" I laid out a bunch of stuff. She said, "Well, I can't do that." One of the things she does is she keeps a calendar.
Frequently, there will just be these names that pop up that say, "This guy's coming in today at 2." It's interesting, because a guy will come in to me and say, "I've had it with this church. All you do is teach chapter by chapter, verse by verse, God's Word, God's Word, God's Word, God's Word. There's no love. There's no mercy here." I'll say, "Wow, that's not good. What's your spiritual gift?" What do you think his is? Mercy. So what he's doing is he's seeing everything through the eyes of mercy. That's all he sees is mercy.
The next guy will come in and say, "Listen, all you have is mercy, mercy, mercy. We need more meat, more meat, more meat." What's his gift? He's the prophet. So he's saying, "I want more of me." God's made us unique and different, and it is really hard to celebrate that uniqueness and that diversity.
Celebrating God-Given Differences
But it's as simple as the family. It's as beautiful as the family. I have just two girls. They are so different from one another. When Haley got married, she said, "There's only one thing I want. I don't want to wear shoes." That was the only thing she cared about. People would say to her, "What kind of flowers are you going to have?" And she would say, "Are you coming to the wedding? Then you'll find out when I do." She couldn't have cared less.
Sarah, on the other hand, determined that she wanted a black and white wedding. She found black and white M&Ms. It was not enough to have black and white M&Ms on every table, but there had to be 13 black and 13 white. Very, very different. But you know what? God's glorified in each one of their lives.
The freedom you have to be you. That's not, by the way, an excuse or permission to be a jerk, but that is the freedom to be how God made you. It's okay to me that we don't all see things the same. I'm all right if I lay something out and somebody goes, "I just don't see it that way." Okay. I'm all right with that.
God's Love Doesn't Exempt Us from Pain
There's the fourth thing we talked about. God's love for us does not exempt us from the pain of life. In other words, just because we're Christians, we don't cease to be human. We bathe ourselves in God's sovereignty. We're reminded continually that things are temporary, that no matter how bad it gets, it can only last a lifetime.
But God does not exempt us from trials and tribulations and difficulties, because He knows in the midst of that, we see Him more
and more clearly every day. I said it last night. I read it in another author's work. He said, "Yeah, Jesus is all I need. Jesus is enough. Jesus alone." And I don't ever really understand that until all I have is Jesus.
Here's the thing for today. God has a plan or a will, and He desires us to live according to His plan and His will. God left you here for a reason. I'm saved by God, from God, for God.
Living Distinctively in the World
When we were here, and I don't know if we did it Memorial Day or last summer when we were here for 12 sessions or whatever it was, but we talked about Matthew chapter 5. Let your good works shine in such a way that men see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. So apparently there's to be something visibly distinctive about us. It's not necessary that we should dress a certain way or wear our hair a certain way or any of that. There's something unique about the way that we live. It's the way that we work.
Let me go back to a verse we looked at, I think last night, Romans chapter 12 verse 2. Let me read it to you again from Eugene Peterson, The Message: "Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking." There's something different and unique about you just in the midst of an ordinary day.
Years ago I was watching Phil Donahue, and he's having one of these reunion shows, and he's got some gal who gave away these kids, and one kid walked out, the next kid walked out, and this kid walked out, and all he did was sit down and say, "Hi Phil," and I said to Susan, "That guy's a Christian." And sure enough, these two other boys were so bitter with their mom, and this guy said, "You know what, I'm a sinner saved by grace." You could literally see something different about him. You and I are to think differently, act differently.
Again, Eugene Peterson: "Remember, take your ordinary everyday life—sleeping, eating, going to work, walking around—and place it before God as an offering." God put us in this world to demonstrate what it means to be saved by grace.
Turning the World Right Side Up
In Acts chapter 17, there is this moment in time where Paul and Silas come to town. Acts chapter 17, verse 6 says that, not finding them there (they're out looking for Paul and Silas), they drag Jason and some of the others out of the house before the council. Here's what they said: "Paul and Silas have turned the rest of the world upside down, and now they're here." Did Paul and Silas turn the world upside down? No, Paul and Silas turned the world right side up.
Tony Campolo is an interesting author. I find myself disagreeing with him more than I agree with him, but he wrote a book called "Who Switched the Price Tags?" It was a great story. It starts when he was a young boy, and they go into a drugstore, and they would find like a transistor radio that they liked that was five dollars, and an ink pen that was a dollar, and they'd switch the price tags, and take the transistor radio and go and buy it for a buck. Campolo's point is, then I grew up, and now I go into the world, and somebody switched the price tags. What God says is really valuable and worthwhile, the world says isn't so valuable. And what God says, "This is temporary, and it's rusting away, moth will eat it, and it'll be destroyed," we say, "This is really something special."
You and I have an opportunity to go into the world, and to turn the world right side up, to take this message of love and reconciliation to a lost and dying world.
The Ministry of Reconciliation
Open your Bibles if you would, please, to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. We alluded to it a couple of times, and we're going to camp on it again just a bit. It is a wonderful reminder of how we want to end this session and this time together.
God's done all this work in our life. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17: "Therefore, because of all this work that God's done and what He's done, therefore, if anyone is in Christ"—okay, that idea of being in Christ is our security in Him, our acceptance by Him, our love for Him—"if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature, and the old things have passed away."
"Now, all these things"—all what things? Well, all this redemption, all this—"is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ." That's what's taken place: reconciliation. Important word. If all you know, let's say you don't know Jeff, you don't know me, all you know is that Jeff and I have been reconciled. If that's all you know, then from that you can deduce what? There was a previous hostility, there was some conflict. If God has reconciled us to Himself, then apparently there was some pre-existing hostile condition. That's what we looked at last night in Romans chapter 5: "Therefore, we now have peace with God."
God reconciled, and look who's doing all the work here. God's doing the work. "God reconciled us to Himself through Christ. He did it all." God saves man. God saves you if you're a follower of Christ. "And then, He's given us a ministry of reconciliation. That is, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses against them, and He's committed to us the word of reconciliation."
Our Role as Ambassadors
God has said to you, "Now you go into this world, and you are a means by which we will proclaim this gospel, this message of reconciliation, the ministry"—where it means service—"the service of reconciliation, the word of reconciliation." "Therefore," now verse 20, "because all that's true, we're ambassadors for Christ. As though God were pleading through us, we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God." There's our message.
We begin to put that together with Matthew 5, and we see that our life is to be distinctive and different, so that to this world we say there is something different about a Christian. Not just that they are anti-gay, pro-life, kind of angry, bitter, straight people. No, we love.
It's that thing, and I've never liked it, "to love the sinner and hate the sin." I've always had a difficult time separating those two, because the sin's always wrapped up in
The Nature of Our Calling
The sinner, isn't it? I've always said, well listen, God doesn't send adultery to hell. He sends adulterers.
One time, I had to find a quote that I had, and I didn't know where it was, and I knew it was on a tape, and I listened to one of my own tapes, and I thought, I don't like that guy I heard. He seems really mad about something. He's really angry about something.
It's the story of an old Baptist guy, and a guy runs into him and says, how are things? They're going to the church. Fine. Got a new pastor. How is he? He's great. He tells us every day that we're sinners, and if we don't repent, we're going to hell. And he said, well, how is that different than the guy that was there before? And he said, the guy before gave us the same message, but he seemed happy about it.
God's given us this ministry of reconciliation. We're ambassadors to the world, and He reminds us, look at verse 21, that He, God, made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God.
When Life Gets in the Way
God left us here as salt and light. God left us here as ambassadors, but life gets in the way of us fulfilling that plan, doesn't it?
I want to make one point today. It has a thousand sub points, and you're going to need to work and apply this. I want to start with one premise and see where it takes us. I want to talk about life robbing us of that big dream, and I want to look at one common call that I hear from all the people in our church.
Here's what I hear. I hear not that we are busy. I hear from them in their lives that they are too busy.
The Problem of Being Too Busy
So, I want to talk about being busy. I am going to surprise you, perhaps. I'm not going to try to say to you, don't be busy. I'm going to say to you, don't be too busy.
Paul writes to Timothy, 1 Timothy 2:2, again from the message, pray especially for rulers and their government to rule well so that we can be quietly about our business, living simply in humble contemplation. 1 Thessalonians 4:10, Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica, we urge you, brethren, to extol still and to make it your ambition. Now, when we think of ambition, what do you immediately think of? Climb the corporate ladder. Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, attend to your own business, work with your hands, just as we commanded you.
Here's what it seems to me. It seems to me that our lives are hurried, overcrowded, driven by what one author calls the tyranny of the urgent. Most of us would describe our lives as chaotic, hectic, borderline out of control and almost unmanageable. Sound about right?
I hear it all the time. I hear it from young people who are single, young people who have just gotten married and now kids come into the picture. I hear from old retirees. I say, what do you do all day? I don't know. The day just flies by. It takes hours to polish a rock.
Four Critical Questions
My problem is not that we're busy, it's that we're too busy. This raises some questions. I wrote four of them.
Do we have to live this way and why are we living this way? If we don't like this lifestyle, is it possible to change it? And now I get at the too busy part. Does this busyness crowd out things that are really important? In other words, if we're living a life that's too busy, what's missing?
Randy Frazee, and I mentioned this book, it's a wonderful little book called Making Room for Life. Randy Frazee, F-R-A-Z-E-E, has a little paragraph. Listen to this. Simply put, many of us have squeezed living out of life. We don't have the time to soak in life and deep friendships. We're always running around trying to get to the next event and this presents at least two major problems. First, our busy lifestyles stimulate a toxic disease called crowded loneliness, but there's even a deeper problem. In our original design, we were created with a connection requirement and if that requirement's not met, we'll die.
Personal Reflection on Extremes
We'll speak autobiographically here. This became clear to me. I have, I think I have a semi-accurate view of myself. I am not really smart. I got that. And I'm not really even intellectually curious, to be honest with you. That sounds like a lot of work.
I am driven to extremes. The only thing I've ever done in moderation is work. I'm driven to extremes. In my old days, people would come by my desk and say, Schrade, do you want to go have a beer? And I would say to them, I'll go get drunk or I'll go home. I'm not interested in having a beer. What's the point? I'm driven to extremes. I'm not into moderation.
But I do think this. I do think God's given me a pretty good understanding of what people are like and being able to take this great big problem and get it down to its real nut.
Lifestyle as a Spiritual Choice
So early on, as a follower of Christ, I realized that lifestyle mattered. By lifestyle, I mean how we live in all parts of it. What we drive is important. Where we live is important. Where we work is important. What we do with our kids is important. How we spend our money, our time, our energy, our effort, all of those things are really important. For this reason, they're all spiritual in nature.
I'm driving along with a friend of mine. We are sitting in traffic on the freeway. And he said, you know, it doesn't seem right to me. Your life seems so easy. You don't have a lot of problems with your wife. You don't have a lot of problems with your kids. So you've been very fortunate there. But your life is like easy. You don't go to meetings at night. And you don't do this. And you don't do that. And you have control of this.
And I said something to him that stuck in my mind and to this day has been a significant one. I said to him, that is by design. That's the way we chose to live. Now, it's always tough because I'm going to talk about myself in a very positive light. So you can see, well, he's an arrogant little guy.
I don't know how to teach you about my life if I don't tell you the truth, so you just have to sort this out. It's not pride and arrogance.
Susan and I bought a house and moved in. My career started to go better. As my career improved, and this doesn't always happen but often does, my income increased. As my income increased—and this was before God saved me—here's what happened. All of a sudden I realized that people who make the kind of money I make don't live in this neighborhood anymore. So we went out and began looking at homes.
It was in the midst of all this that God saved me, and God began to do something very special. Over a prolonged period of time, we said, "You know what? People who make the money that we make don't live in this neighborhood anymore. We should live in another neighborhood perhaps." We would look at model homes and go out looking.
One day, Susan and I were driving home, and here's what we said: "We're going to stay in this house." It was like somebody lifted a hundred pounds off our shoulders. You know what drove that decision? We did not know what God was going to do in our life, but we didn't want to say no if He had something for us and money was going to stop us from doing it.
The Cost of Consumer Debt
I don't know where they get all these statistics, but they say nine out of ten men and women who apply to go to the mission field—nine out of ten—don't get there because of consumer debt. Get this now: this is the person who says, "God's got a call on my life." Nine out of ten don't make it because of consumer debt. Imagine standing before God and saying, "God, I got the call, heard the call, got the gift. But you know what? I had to have that widget."
I'm watching it now, and we're going to get down and dirty. Like I said, if this offends you, I apologize—I don't mean to. But I'm watching the news, and I'm listening to these people whine and moan and groan because their interest rates and their loans go up. You signed the loan. You got more house than you can afford because they gave you a no-interest loan or a low-interest loan. Did you think they were going to let you live in there forever at 1%?
"That's not fair." You're exactly right—it's not fair. They should be charging you more. Why is this happening? Because this is so subtle, and when you can start to peel this away, you can see what you're all about.
The Deception of Debt
You decided to get more house than you can afford. You decided to go into debt. Do you know what debt is? Debt is an instrument that allows you to pretend to be someone you really aren't. Debt allows you to pretend to be somebody you really belong with.
Susan and I said, "You know what? We are not going to do that." I have friends who do this: they'll go in and get something, give the guy the credit card. If they swipe it and it says "approved," they can afford it. That's how they see it. We said, "What if God does something in our life? What if God really begins to do something in our life, and we don't know what it is, and we can't get there because of money?"
I was telling the guys last night: the first year I moved into ministry—1986 or whatever it was—that year, I made less money than I paid in taxes the year before. I've only had one raise since. Don't go "woe is me"—nobody's holding any bake sales for me. You don't need to do that. My point is simply this: we made a choice.
When God Calls but Debt Holds Back
I have had guys, men, who God begins to move in their life and they're saying, "I want to do what you do." So apparently what I do is very easy to do because they all want to do it. "I want to go to work. I'd love to come to work at the church."
We had a guy who said, "I'd love to come in and head up the men's ministry because we don't have a good men's ministry at our church." I said, "All right, let me see if I can get that approved. We can get a number in the budget. How much do you need to live on?" He said, "I'm probably going to need about a hundred, a hundred and a quarter." I said, "Okay, that's our debt service for the building. No, is the answer. That ain't going to work. You're going to have to move." He was unwilling to do it.
All of a sudden in the midst of this life, do you see what's beginning to happen? You're running around, so you have to ask yourself some real serious questions: Why are you living that way?
The "Everybody Does It" Mentality
Well, it could be this—and it's interesting, this very answer you hate in your kids—but it could be that you're saying, "Well, everybody does it. Everybody lives this way. That is just normal. Running around from thing to thing to thing to thing is just normal, and everybody does it."
Let me tell you something from firsthand experience: a lot of people may do it, but everybody doesn't do it. You may think that you have to live at this hectic pace to get ahead. My question would be: ahead of what? To where?
Somewhere we have to grab hold of this: oftentimes the American dream and what the world defines as success is in conflict with God's dream for your life and what God defines as success. Something's got to give.
The Reality About Rich People
Let me tell you something about rich people—I know a lot of them. God's been good; I know a lot of them. They work and work and work and work and work, and everything drives toward that. Rarely—rarely—are they of consequence in the kingdom of God except for finance, which is a very important thing. But not a lot of deep relationships.
I have all sorts of young business guys who say, "Can you hook me up with a successful Christian business guy who can mentor me?" I'm saying, "No, they don't have time. No, they're not ready."
Here's a lie that I hear too: "Well, this is just a season of life." Now, if you're a jeweler and it's Thanksgiving, you're going to be busy until Christmas. I get that.
that. But if it's every week in the real estate business, here's what we'd say. When the market was really good, you got to work, work, work, work, work, because you got to make hay while the sun shines. When the market would get bad, we'd say, you got to work twice as hard now because we got to make up for lost time. I wasn't in there very long before I realized, when do we not work very hard? When do we back it off a little bit? Because we're working when it's good. We're working twice as hard when it's bad. When do we relax?
The majority of the time, the underlying cause of this is pride, again. You know what, guys? Now, there are no women here. I said to Janet when you all walked in, this is a very different environment in some ways than a Sunday service. You guys are much looser. This is just my observation. You're much looser, a lot more laughing, a lot more joking around, much more connected. When the kids are here and stuff, sometimes it's a little different. You know, you got a lot of stuff going on, I understand it.
The Wife and Kids Excuse
But a lot of times, since it's just us guys, let me tell you that I got you all figured out. A lot of times, you'll use the wife and the kids and what they need as an excuse for you to just go, go, go, go, go. So you'll say, well, I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing it for them. No, you aren't. No, you aren't. That's a lie. Because they don't need all that stuff.
When we raised the kids, here's a rule we had at our house. You ought to have this one if you don't. Here you go, kids, you get one activity, that's it. "Well, Dad, I'd like to do cheerleading and student council this year." That sounds like two. You don't get two. Now, from my perspective, choose student council because I can't go to those meetings and that's perfect. This cheer thing's driving me nuts. I'm going to all these games. I'm the only father at a football game or basketball game that's saying, "Take a timeout, they've been working on that cheer." That's the way we raised them.
I watch people go from here to here to here to here to here with these kids. And they're going to camp and then they're going to music camp and then they're going to basketball camp. My son-in-law's dad was the National High School Baseball Association coach of the decade for the 90s. Now, this guy knows baseball. He works with a lot of major leaguers. On the team that my son-in-law was on, there are three kids that are now playing in the major leagues out of that high school team. That's kind of rare. This guy is now giving hitting lessons, at $75 an hour to seven-year-olds. This is stupid, guys. This is dumb.
Depriving Kids of Being Kids
The way we're raising kids is depriving them of being kids. In Randy Frazee's book, he's talking about our kids. And he has a really interesting thing. He's talking about what they're not getting. He's talking about we're robbing them of their creativity, and indeed we are. But he said we're robbing them of conflict management resolution. And I'm thinking, what?
Then he tells the story. He's exactly right. When I was a kid, we would start every morning and my mom would say, "Here's what needs to get done today." We'd get it done and then we'd leave the house and the only time we'd come back is to eat. And all we did was play baseball all day. We'd play baseball. But we didn't have enough kids. We didn't have 18 kids. So here's what we'd do. We had to be creative. And I was left-handed. So if I'm hitting and the ball goes to the left side of second base, they're out because we don't have enough kids for over there.
But he's talking about conflict management. When kids play now, they got the umpires there, and the parents there, and the commissioner there, and lawyers there to resolve it. And when he said that, he's right. We didn't have half an inning before we were arguing. "He was out!" "No he wasn't!" And somehow we got through all that. Somehow we fixed it. But kids aren't even kids.
It's expensive. And ultimately what you're often doing is giving them what they don't really need, stuff, in place of what they really need, you.
The Money Trap
In Ecclesiastes chapter 5, Solomon writes this. And the principle is wonderful here. "Whoever loves money never has money enough. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. As goods increase, so do those who consume them. What benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on him?" Here's what he's saying. And statistics, by the way, bear this out again and again and again. Whoever loves money, wants money, there's never enough of it. And as money increases, so do the expenditures.
Here's a statistic, as my grandpa would say. Here's a statistic that would jar your preserves. On average, as Americans, for every dollar we earn, we spend a dollar ten. I have sat with families who say we're making 35, 40 grand a year, and they say, "Oh my gosh, if I could make $50,000 a year, I'd be so happy." Then they make 50, and it's 60, and 60, and it's 70.
I interviewed a kid and subsequently hired this kid. And I said, "What would be a dream job for you?" And he told me. I said, "What would be a dream if you could make it?" He said, "If I could make 40 or 50 grand a year, it'd be incredible." Last year he made just over a million bucks. And he doesn't appear to me to be any happier than he was before, maybe less happy. What's behind that drive? What's behind that busyness?
Jim Elliott's Warning
Jim Elliott, you know that name? "He is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." Jim Elliott in His diary. So this is a young man at about age 20, early in His life, mid-50s in terms of date, 1950, when He was at Wheaton. He writes this. This is a diary entry. "I've been musing lately on the extremely dangerous, cumulative effect of earthly things. One may have good reason, for example, to want a wife, and one may have her legitimately. But with a wife
comes Peter the pumpkin eater's proverbial dilemma. He must find a place to keep her. Most wives won't stay on such terms as Peter proposed. So a wife demands a house. A house in turn requires curtains and rugs and washing machines, etc. A house with this thing must soon become a home, and children are the intended outcome.
Now listen to this. Write this down. This is important to remember. How great is this phrase? Needs multiply as they're met. That's not how I think, is it? That's not how you think. Got a need, meet the need, I'm done. He says no. Needs multiply as they are met.
A car demands a garage. A garage, land. Land, a gardening, a garden, tools, and tools need to be sharpened. Woe to the man who would live a disentangled life in my century. Second Timothy 2:4 is impossible in the United States if one insists on his wife. Now, I disagree with that, but he's making a point. By the way, Second Timothy 2:4 said no soldier in active duty entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so he may please the one who enlisted him.
I have learned from this that the wisest life is the simplest one, lived in the fulfillment of only the basic requirements of life: shelter, food, covering, a bed. And even these can become productive of other needs as one doesn't need. Be on guard, O my soul, of complicating your environment so that you have neither time nor room for growth.
Jim Elliott's Legacy
Now, do you all know Jim Elliott's story? You know it's him and a handful of guys who go down to South America and on their first foray to reach this tribe to share the gospel with them, they're slaughtered. And apparently, I was obviously not around at the time, but all I've read, these were the best and brightest, and this was just an amazing tragedy.
This has nothing to do with what he's just written, but listen to these next two sentences. It's really amazing that they're here. "I must not think it strange if God takes in youth those whom I would have kept on earth till they were older. God is peopling eternity, and I must not restrict Him to old men and old women." Isn't that interesting? But let's not lose the point. It's very easy to live a disentangled life.
The Tyranny of Things
Randy Alcorn writes this: "Nancy and I lived in our house for 23 years. For the first nine years, we had ugly orange carpet. We never cared what happened to it. The day we finally installed new carpet, someone lit a candle, and the match fell off and burned a hole in the carpet. The day before, we wouldn't have cared. Now we're upset. Were we better off with our nice new possession?"
Every item we buy is one more thing to think about, talk about, clean, repair, rearrange, fret over, replace when it goes bad. Let's say I get a television for free. Now what? I hook up an antenna and subscribe to cable. I buy a new DVD player. I rent movies. I get surround sound. I buy a recliner so I can watch my programs in comfort, and this all costs money, but it also takes a large amount of time, energy, attention. The time I devote to my television and accessories means less time for communicating with family, reading the Word of God, and so forth.
So here you go. Great sentence. So what's the true cost of my free television? Acquiring a possession may push you into redefining priorities. This, by the way, is huge. I get this, and my priorities shift.
If I buy a boat, I want to justify the purchase by using the boat, which may mean frequent weekends away from family or church, making me unavailable to attend my daughter's basketball games or teach a Sunday school class or work in the nursery. The problem isn't the boat or the television. The problem is me. It's the law of life, the tyranny of things.
The Root of Busyness
When we are busy, it is my conviction that most of the time we are busy because we're in the pursuit of something that God says really isn't all that important. It really doesn't matter.
I am, and you're all going to wonder about me, one of the few men in the world who love to shop. I love to shop. I love to go to stores. I go up to Outlet Mall, and I can go to the Air Museum and go, I go to the Outlet Mall and go, "Do you have this in a gray?" And so we have a conflict, so I'll go to the Outlet Mall.
Here's what I've discovered, guys. You can buy all sorts of things, like these shorts. These are shorts that are really cool. I don't know if you in the back can see how cool they really are. They're really cool. You know what I paid for them? You're going to say overpaid, $5.99. You can buy all sorts of stuff. You can get all sorts of things, and you don't have to pay retail, and you don't have to spend a bunch of money, and no one really cares.
Hard Questions Without Easy Answers
So you've got to ask yourself a hard question, boys, and here's the problem with this question. There is no answer. Not a general answer, one you have to come up with. Is it okay to live where you live? Is it okay to drive what you drive? Is it okay to wear what you wear? Is it okay to send your kid to this school, this wonderful school?
I spend a lot of time with young kids. I like kids. And when I say young kids, not young, young, young, but like seniors in high school and older. And I will find students all the time who are taking $125,000, $150,000 worth of education loans to get a degree, to get a $40,000 a year job. That is stupid. I don't know about schools up here, but go to ASU, go to MCC. Why are you going to that school? You see how all those things come into play? And this gets to be really tough. But we've got to answer these questions.
Why are we so busy? Are we to be busy? Absolutely, but not so busy that we are unavailable for what God has called us to do.
A Personal Story
I mentioned last night my dad died a little over a year and a half ago. My dad was born June 13th, 1924 in Melrose, Iowa. Is there one person in here who's ever heard of Melrose, Iowa? Melrose, Iowa is
My dad was born in a little town called Melrose, Iowa. Melrose is known for one single event. In 1937, the Melrose Shamrocks won the Iowa State Basketball Tournament. If you ever saw the movie Hoosiers, that's what it's about. There was no ranking system, but there were something like seven boys on the basketball team. They were 36 and 0. So that would be like a 5A school getting beat by a 1A school undefeated. If you know anybody that knows Melrose, by the way, I did a funeral about two years ago. I mentioned Melrose, Iowa and the guy said "1937 basketball team." Anybody who knows Melrose, that's what they know.
There were 400 people then in the town, about 250 now. My grandfather worked on the railroad. There were six kids. They had a small two-bedroom dump of a house. All six kids were in one bedroom. What I didn't realize until years later is they didn't have any money to afford the house. They paid a landlord for the house. My dad's the only one of the six kids that went to college.
Growing Up Poor
My mom, by comparison, was from a wealthy family, but when I sat during the time of my dad's funeral with my mom and my aunt, they talked about at Christmas how their parents would give them a nickel and an apple. How when relatives from Washington DC came to town, they would break out something special - toilet tissue. And my mom would say, "As compared to the Schraders, we were rich."
My dad graduated from college. While he was in college, he had two full-time jobs and went to school full-time. He went to work at Davenport Bank and Trust Company and he retired there after 43 years. My dad was a simple man, not a simple ton.
A Man of Few Words
When I was back for his funeral, it was kind of interesting. I went back and the boys were sitting down and were meeting with the priest who's going to do the funeral. And the priest said, "Would any of you boys like to talk?" And the boy said, "Why don't you let Tom talk?" And my other brother said, "Let him go last." And my brother said, "Clean up the mess when it's done."
I said to the boys in preparation, "Can you give me one thing that dad said to you that really made a difference in your life?" All three of them, me included, said, "I can't think of one thing my dad ever told me that made a difference. I can't think of one piece of advice." He didn't say it, he just did it.
We're in the car one day, that generated - by the way, I mean this is important. If you've got a dad who's 75 and older, I want you to understand something. These guys are not wired the way you're wired. My dad never told me he loved me. Hey, he did every day. He let you stay there and eat. That's how he loved you. And that's all he's got, man. That's all they're capable of saying. If you're waiting for him to ooze out and say, "Oh, I love you, I love you," it's not there. It's just not in there. They're not wired that way. But I need it. If you need it that bad, learn this: remember, you tell it to your kids.
Simple Wonder
My dad and I are driving out, and I'm looking at some real estate stuff. And so we're out, and there's some orange groves there. And we stop at a stop sign. I look over, and my dad's crying. Well, he never cried. The only time I saw him cry was at John Kennedy's funeral when they played Taps. I saw my dad cry. I said, "What's the deal?" He said, "When I was growing up, I knew oranges grew on trees, but I never thought I'd see one."
My dad would sit out back at our house by the pool for hours and watch airplanes land. He'd say, "How do you think they stay up there?" I said, "I don't know." He was not a simple ton. He was a simple man.
I'm a huge University of Iowa Hawkeye football fan. He didn't give a rip about Iowa football. He loved high school football. I would call him, and I would say, "What you doing tonight?" He said, "I'm going to a football game." I said, "Is Assumption playing?" Because that was our high school. He said, "Nah." And he had two schools. He'd give me two schools. Like, "Muscatine is playing Burlington." And I'd say, "Do you know anybody?" "No. I just like to watch these kids learn the game." Man, that's gone, isn't it?
When Childhood Was Different
I start to sound like a crotchety old man here. When I played Little League baseball, we played seven games the first half of the year, eight the second half. We started in the middle of May when it was too cold and rainy, really, to be playing. You played 15 games. If your team was decent, then you played in the playoffs.
And it's very hard to believe this, but I was a pretty good baseball player. Pretty good athlete. High school, I played baseball, football, golf. Went out for basketball, but they already had one. So that didn't work so well for me. So then you'd play the all-star game, and you'd go as far as you could go in this.
Do you know now, I'm running into 10-year-old kids - so when we were all done, we might play 20 games a year. I'm running into 10-year-old kids down our place that are playing 75 and 80 baseball games a year. I'll bet you got kids like that. I got guys that have daughters in dance, and they're going to Lansing, Michigan for dance competition. And I want to say, with all due respect, are you nuts?
The Cost of Competition
"Well, they can't compete anymore. Boy, if they're not in and playing baseball all year long, then they can't compete anymore." You know my conclusion? Then don't let them compete. None of you have a boy that's going to play Major League Baseball. Sorry. Among all other liabilities, he has your genes.
And you have to ask yourself, what does this cost? And it's robbing you of life itself. I don't know hardly anybody who eats dinner together anymore.
I sat with my mom, and I said, "Mom, when is the first time you ate dinner out in a restaurant?" She said, "Oh my gosh, I don't know." I said, "Well, did you have restaurants in Sheraton, Iowa?" And she said, "The only restaurants we really had were in hotels," which makes sense,
Obviously. But she said, "I don't know. I don't know when I first ate in a restaurant." That family time, that hanging time. And we're passing on to our kids something they don't need, which is that kind of value and standard.
Every kid I know is going to college for one reason. What is that? To get a good job. I don't know one kid that's there to learn anything. I have yet to say, "Why are you going to college?" "Yeah, I really want to learn." I never heard it. "I'm going to learn this. I'm going to do this." No, it's "I'm going to get a good job." And you know where they get that? They get it from the parents. "You got to do this, and it's about this, and achieve this, and go for this."
Don't take this wrong. I'm not anti-achievement, my friend. I'm not against money. I'm not against success. I'm not against winning. I would just like us to define what it means to win. What does it mean to be successful? God says that there are some of us who are rich in His kingdom and poor in the world.
The Question of Busyness
I'm too busy. You have to ask yourself why? Busy at what? For what? For what end?
God left you here to be a minister of reconciliation. Paul writes in Philippians 3:20 and said, "Our citizenship is in heaven." One of the commentaries writes this: "So to be a Roman citizen living in Philippi or wherever did not mean you spent your time pining away for the good life in the city of Rome. It meant that you longed—it did not mean that you longed to get out of Philippi, out of Asia Minor, and back to where your heart was, the city of Rome. Instead, it meant that you were entrusted with a task of bringing Rome and all its achievements and glory to Philippi or Jerusalem or Alexandria, wherever you found yourself."
You and I are charged with bringing the values and the truth and the reality of heaven and God's economy here.
Seeing the Future
Here's what we sang: "I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross." We have a giant advantage over the rest of the world, and that is we can see the future. Wayne Gretzky says, "I skate where the puck is going to be, not where it's been." Charles Schwab says, "The best decision makers are capable of seeing the present as if it were already the past." One of Napoleon's generals said he had only to glance through a telescope to sum up the position in the forces of an entire army and knew when and where to strike.
Remember I mentioned that GPS thing we had and we got down in here and it said, "When possible make a legal U-turn." I had punched in something and when we got there, here's what it said: "You've arrived at your destination." You and I are never going to arrive at our destination as long as we're here on this planet. We're always working toward that destination and God left us here to serve.
A Daughter's Wisdom
I got in my daughter's car one day and in the back was her diary. I assume it's a private thing but I assume if it was that private she wouldn't have left it in the backseat for me to look at. That seems reasonable, doesn't it, gentlemen?
I opened it up and here's what she had written: "Many people feel that to follow Christ is to lose everything and gain nothing. But once we've been given freedom, we as Christians often forfeit that freedom and return again to slavery by pursuing our own desires and following our own flesh. We will one day realize that apart from Christ we are not free. Our freedom looks nothing like the freedom the world looks for. The world looks for freedom to do as it pleases no matter what, no matter who gets hurt along the way. Our freedom is to love as Christ loved, to serve as Christ served. Many say that sounds like bondage but in following the truth, the truth will set you free."
That's pretty smart for a young girl.
What Are You Doing in the World?
Here's our close. A guy who's a friend of one of the guys in our church came to speak and he said he had just been in Africa and he had a cab driver and the cab driver was learning English and so he was practicing on him. They were just using phrases that we use all the time. The cab driver was trying to say to him, "What in the world are you doing?" Instead he had the same seven words but rearranged them: "What are you doing in the world?"
That's the question. What are you doing in the world? God saved you for a reason by His grace. You have entered into this relationship that is absolutely unbreakable. He loves you unconditionally. He's freed you from the bondage of sin to be who you want to be. He has not taken you out of the human race and made you a robot. You are still human but He's left you here for a reason and for a plan to be His hands, to be His feet, to be His men.
A Final Word
Weekends like this can sometimes get overemphasized, sometimes underemphasized. Sometimes you can think you're going to come up, there's going to be an amazing thing happening. Once in a while it happens. Most often not big. The first night Jeff said, "I hope you leave here a little bit different." That's my hope. That's my prayer.
For some of you, here's what that means: you never really considered Christ and His grace, God and His grace until you got here. And now you're coming face to face with that. You got your sin, God's grace, and now you're wrestling with that.
But for most of you, I'm guessing that you came as followers of Christ. What I pray is that God allowed you to hear through His word, through a story, maybe through a sentence—love God, hate sin, whatever it is—that God wants to use you in a significant way. I cannot imagine anything more motivating than to know that the God who created this world didn't wind it up and walk away, but is still in charge and has desired to use people like you and me to advance His kingdom in His story.
In that book, Louie Giglio talks a lot about Moses. I love that story of Moses because there was that point in Moses' life where he said, "God, I'm ready to go. It's time to get these guys out of Egypt. Let me do it." That's not going to happen. Bam! Now he spends 40 years out as a shepherd. Now God comes to him and says,
God Uses Broken People
It's time to go. And he goes, "I stutter, I can't even talk." That's who God uses. God doesn't use the young, cocky Moses who's arrogant and everybody wants to follow him. He uses this guy.
Do you get that? It was the right guy with the right vision and mission, but it was the wrong time. And it was the wrong time because it was the wrong attitude. God's looking for broken people who will take that message of reconciliation to a lost and dying world wherever He has placed you.
Closing Prayer
Pray with me, will you please, as Dave and the guys come and close this.
Father, thank you for this place, this wonderful place, a vision that you gave to a couple that now for over six and a half decades has been used to proclaim your Word and touch lives. God, thank you for Jeff and his staff, for Dave and the band, for the people who cook the food that we'll enjoy in just a few minutes, and the hands and the feet that'll wash the toilets and scrub the showers.
God, I pray that we would leave this place not closer to you. I don't know how we get any closer than unbreakable relationship, but that that union would be vibrant and vital. Then in a world that can get very complex with beeps and shakes and deals and instantaneous flux and stocks and bonds, orders that can be lost, competition from around the globe in this very complex world, we would love you and hate sin.
God, we pray that maybe at the expenses of some of the junk of the world that we would be men you would use in a significant way, not because we're significant but because you are. And you take our ordinary life, our sleeping, our walking around, our brushing our teeth. You take our relationships. You take all that we have and use them for your honor and your glory.
We pray that to you in Christ's name. Amen.