Getting On The Same Page
Tom Shrader begins a conference series by establishing the theological foundation of salvation by grace through faith alone. Using his personal testimony of conversion and Romans 5, he distinguishes biblical Christianity from all forms of religion, emphasizing that Christ died for helpless sinners and enemies of God. The teaching sets up the framework for living as transformed believers in a fallen world.
“All religion does this - all religion has an answer to the sin problem, but along comes biblical Christianity and it says you are a helpless sinner and an enemy of God, incapable of pleasing Him.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Afloat in a World Circling the Drain (2013)
Recorded: 2013 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 41 min
Themes: salvation, grace, faith, testimony, conversion, foundation, transformation, hope, new believer, questioning faith, seeking salvation, struggling with doubt, conference attendee, mixed backgrounds, searching for truth, needing clarity
Scripture: Romans 5:1-10, Romans 1:18-20, Romans 2:1, Romans 3:10-23, Ephesians 2:8-9
Theological Themes: soteriology, salvation by grace, justification by faith, sola gratia, biblical Christianity, depravity, conversion experience, theological foundations
Full Transcript
Good to see you, glad that you are here. How many of you were here for the first part of the week? I didn't get a flavor of it, so a bunch of you. How many of you then are here just starting tonight, first session? All right, good. Well, we hope you... yeah, there can't be anybody other than that, I don't think, that has to cover everyone. So we're glad to be with you.
Sandy and I came in today from Arizona. It's been really a great summer until the last maybe week or so, and it's been 118 and 117, and that's starting to get warm. By that point, it's time to get out of there, and to get here is a beautiful treat. I don't know how many years in a row we've been here, but it's a great place to come, and then to see so many of you that we've seen before, it's just a treat to be with you.
Part of the week is always to figure out what to talk about, because you come from so many different backgrounds, and in terms of economic backgrounds, social, the way you've been raised, and then theological backgrounds. I found, maybe three or four months ago, a series that I put together in 1990, and the title of it is How to Stay Afloat in a World that's Circling the Drain. That's what we're going to look at. I have four sessions with you, two tomorrow, and then two Friday, and then tonight.
Getting On The Same Page
Tonight is the introduction to this. God saved me in 1980, and probably by 1983, I started speaking at different venues, and then by 84 or 85, doing a lot of conferences, and initially a lot of men's conferences, and then family camps, and all sorts of things. It took me a while to realize that I had a basic assumption that I had in place each time that I came, and that that assumption wasn't always accurate.
For the last four or five years, when I go to speak somewhere, if it's going to be a session like this, where we have five or six of them, I'll take the first one, and what I call it is everybody getting on the same page, getting on the same page theologically.
Over the years, I have asked what feels like hundreds of people, are you a Christian? It's interesting, when you have time to go through that, as they begin to answer it, you begin to understand what they mean by that. By far, without exception, the greatest answer I've ever had was a guy where I said to him, are you a Christian? And He said, not in the biblical sense. I don't know what that meant, but I knew then, and that's when I started to go, okay, we need to kind of define terms.
My Story: From Iowa to Arizona
Part of the way to do this is tell you a little bit about me, and then pull us in, and we'll just get the issue right in front of you, first thing, first night. I was born and raised in Iowa. Anybody here from Iowa, usually? Where are you from? Really? I was born and raised in Davenport, Iowa, and what are the odds of that? Where did you live in Davenport? You know, up by St. Ambrose. I went to Assumption High School. They're right in that same area. How are the chances of that? No chance we ever hooked up along the way, was there? That could be kind of an ugly thing. You look familiar, but I didn't think clearly in those days. Wow, well, let me regroup just a bit.
I'm from Davenport, Iowa, Catholic grade school, high school, and college. I was educated in elementary school by the most misnamed, gruesome group of people in the world. They were called the Sisters of Mercy. They had no mercy. They were brutal. Holy Family grade school, and then to Assumption High School, and then there's a liberal arts college right there, St. Ambrose College, now St. Ambrose University, and that's where I went to school.
Religion vs. Relationship
I was exposed, from the time I was a little boy, I was exposed to church. What happened to me is that I was exposed to religion. This is not a criticism of the Catholic Church, it's just my story. I was exposed to religion, but I wasn't exposed to a relationship with Christ. I wasn't changed, as you just sang, from the inside out.
There's a term that is unique to Biblical Christianity. In fact, it's what separates Biblical Christianity from every other faith in the world, and this term is called grace. Everything else is religion. In my mind, my economy, the way I look at things, you have Biblical Christianity, and then you have everything else.
In religion, it's kind of an idea of doing well, doing the best you can. By the time I got to my sophomore year at St. Ambrose, because here was my idea: my idea was that somehow, I didn't know how God did it, but that somehow God had a prototype of this great computer that kept track of everything you did, and then when you died, you hit a button. If you had more good than bad, you went to heaven. More bad than good, you went to hell. Maybe you had some variation of that, too, but that's what I believed.
Well, by my sophomore year of college, my bad stack was so high that I figured, I'm never going to get balances out, let's see how high we can get that stack. That's just kind of how I lived.
The Move West
I was one night with a friend, and He said, I'm going to move, and I said, where are you going to move to? And He said, I'm going to move to Scottsdale. This was back in 1975, and so it's not like it was now. I had no idea where Scottsdale was. I didn't even know what state it was in. I said, why are you moving? He said, it's great weather. He said, that's where the Cubs spring train. We hadn't seen the sun in a month. I said, well, can I move with you? And He said, sure. Yeah, that's great. I said, when are you going to move? And like I said, it was in the spring, and He said, we're going to move. My wife and I are going to move the day after Labor Day. So the day after Labor Day, I took what little I had, kind of wearing it, I didn't have much, and
got in a Hertz truck and started to drive to Phoenix, Arizona. I was about 15 miles out of town, and I started crying. I said, what am I doing here? But that launched what was God's plan, I'm really convinced, for my life.
I got to Phoenix, and here was my plan. Here was my strategic plan for life. I was going to play golf and party until I ran out of money. I didn't have that much money, and I loved to play golf, and I loved to party. So I was out of money pretty quickly, and I had to get a job.
Starting Over in Arizona
I got a job at what was the largest employer in the state of Arizona at the time—Motorola. There's now less than 500 employees of Motorola in Arizona. At the time, there were 55,000. Motorola was primarily an engineering company with a sales arm. If you watch the old highway patrol shows, you'll see them with a Motorola radio. Any of the Motorola products, the two-way communication products, you had to buy from Motorola. They didn't have distributors.
I sold what was really the first mobile phone, which was a box about the size of this fan. It fit in the trunk, and then up on the dashboard, you had a headset. That mobile phone cost $3,300. To talk was $2 the first minute and $1 each minute afterwards.
A Night That Changed Everything
I'm working at Motorola, and it was a Friday. I had helped sponsor Tom's Trader Appreciation Day. I felt I wasn't getting a lot of recognition, and this would be a good day. We decided to work till noon, and then party the rest of the day. So we did, and we partied a little bit.
It was about 7 o'clock on Friday night, and I'm driving home. All of a sudden, a Tempe police officer pulled me over. He said, "Can you step out of the car?" I said, "Sure." I stepped out of the car, and he said, "Can you lean back and touch your nose?" I said, "I don't know if I could do that in the morning when I get up, but I know I can't do it now." So off I went into what we would call a drunk tank.
I was dressed up for Tom's Trader Appreciation Day. I had on a powder blue shirt and yellow slacks. I looked really good. It was Friday night, about 7:30, so I had beat the crowd. I was in there early. About 15 minutes later, five or six guys came in who had been in a biker bar and got in a fight. I'm in there with them. There's certain things in life that you don't know unless you experience. One of the things I learned that night is bikers have a thing for guys in yellow pants. You don't know that. You've never read that anywhere. I got out of there and survived.
A little later, maybe the next year in December, I had essentially the same experience, except this time in Scottsdale. A female police officer came up. I learned something this night, too. It was Sergeant Elizabeth. She doesn't want to be called Babs. You don't know that unless you experience it.
The Beginning of Change
I went to work the next day, and I said to my best friend, "Here's what's happened. This is a problem. I have an issue." I explained it to him, and he said, "You need Jesus." I said to him, "Do you have anything else?" I didn't know what that meant, but I knew it wasn't something that I was attracted to. That was in December.
In March of that year, some guys in our office went to a Bible study. By now I'm working at a place called Coldwell Banker doing commercial real estate. I said to these guys, "Can I go to that Bible study?" They said, "Well, it's for anybody." With the standard that high, I was able to get in.
There was a guy by the name of Larry Wright. We're in a room probably about half the size of this section here. About 30, 35 people. Larry began to teach, and it's as though I was the only guy in the room. He began to teach, and it was like he'd followed me around. For 45 minutes he laid my life out in front of me.
A Divine Encounter
I went back to the office, and I was literally shaking. I got the phone book, and there were a whole bunch of Wrights in there—Larry Wrights and Lawrence Wrights. I called this number, and I heard, "Yeah, hello." I said, "My name's Tom Schrader. I was at a Bible study this morning. There was a guy teaching by the name of Larry Wright. Is there any chance you know that Larry Wright?" He said, "That's me."
That was on a Thursday. I met with him the next Tuesday. I asked him all the big questions about Adam and Eve and Noah and the Bible being the Word of God and all of that stuff. He said, "Listen, you need to read the Bible. You need to read tonight the Gospel of John." I read the Gospel of John, and it might as well have been in Greek, because I didn't understand any of it.
The next morning, I was out waiting for a client. I felt this incredible weight that I'd really felt for a long time. Larry had told me how to respond. I said, "God, listen, I'm a sinner. That's the one thing for which we have empirical data to support. I got that. I'm a sinner. I believe Jesus died on the cross. I was raised with that idea. But now I realize He died and paid the price for my sin. He did for me what I couldn't do for myself. He died in my place. He died to save people like me."
God, is all I've got to do is believe. I believe. I want that with all my heart. God, I've had this life 30 years. Good luck. You're going to have it. And I'm waiting for bells and angels and choirs singing, nothing.
The next day, I went into the Bible study. There was Larry. I said, Larry, here's what happened yesterday. And he hugged me. And I thought, oh, my gosh, they're huggers. We're going to hug every time we get together now. That began an e-ticket ride for me. All of a sudden, I was in the right relationship with the creator God of the universe through the only way that I could come into that relationship. It's salvation as the Bible talks about it. For by grace, you've been saved through faith.
Justified by Faith: The Foundation of Peace with God
In Romans chapter 5, we'll just spend a second on that. Romans chapter 5, just beginning in verse 1, and we're out to make one point here. And therefore, having been justified, how am I justified? By faith. And faith is a gift of God. I'm saved by grace. Having been justified by grace, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
There's a song that we sing at Christmas that has a wonderful line in it. God and sinner, what? Reconcile. Now, if you don't know anything, here's Lisa. If you don't know anything about Lisa and me except this, that now Lisa and I have been reconciled. That's all the information you have. What can you conclude from that? That there was a preexisting hostile condition. God and sinner have been reconciled. We were at war with God.
Look at verse 6, 8, and 10. If you're somebody who underlines in your Bible or writes in your Bible, look at verse 6 and circle the phrase, while we were still helpless. Verse 8, while we were yet sinners. Verse 10, while we were enemies. While we were helpless, sinners, enemies of God. Verse 6, Christ died at the right time. Verse 8, God demonstrated His love toward us. Now, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Verse 10, while we were still enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His son.
The Problem of Sin and Religion's Answer
All religion does this. All religion has an answer to the sin problem. Everybody understands something's wrong. You don't have to live very long before you look around and your mind starts to process the world you see. And you go, something's wrong in this world. This is a screwed up place.
And then you start to narrow it down. You look at the country and you go, man, the country's screwed up. You start to look at the people around you and you say, the people around me are screwed up. And then quickly you get to this point. What is it? You're screwed up. Now, what the Bible calls that is sin.
As man begins to address this whole issue of sin, what he inevitably does is lower God and exalt himself. That's why John the Baptist said, speaking of Jesus, He must increase and I must decrease. What religion does, what man does, is minify God, magnify man. So that A.W. Tozer said 50, 60 years ago, that our theology does not ascend high enough, we don't let God be God, or descend low enough to get an accurate view of how sinful we really are.
The French philosopher Voltaire, one of my all-time favorite lines, said this, that God made man in His own image, and man has been returning the favor ever since. That's what religion is. Religion is essentially us saying, if I was God, this is how I would do it.
Amazing Love: The Radical Nature of Biblical Christianity
Amazing love, how can it be, think about it, amazing love, how can it be that you, my king, would die for me? Kings don't die for their servants. Religion makes absolute sense. It's usually a combination, at best, of God doing something through Christ, but still stuff for you to do.
But along comes biblical Christianity, and it says, here you go, you are a helpless sinner and an enemy of God, incapable of pleasing Him. That's what Paul's done in the first five chapters of the book of Romans. He's driven us to the conclusion that all have sinned, and he does it in a very systematic way. He begins by looking around at the whole world.
Suppressing the Truth
Let's look at it. Romans chapter 1, verse 18, Paul writes this, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. That word suppress there is an active verb. It's to hold down.
I have eight grandkids, I have two daughters, eight grandkids, and their ages are 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and three weeks, four weeks, five weeks. And so when my kids were little, they had toys, they had two toys I hated. One was the popcorn popper. Everybody remembers that. Yeah, that was the worst toy. My parents gave it to my kids, and it was their way of shoving it right up me. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, I hated that.
But then there was another more conventional toy, and it was a jack-in-the-box. Do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do, bup, do-do-do-do. But the thing about that toy is, by and large, their dexterity was not good enough that they could get the thing back in. It would take them an hour, an hour and a half, and then they'd blow it. Well, one day, my daughter, Sarah, figured out that if she held this down, she could go, do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do. Well, this is not good.
And it was right at the time that she was doing that, that I was studying the book of Romans for the first time, and I came to this verse about suppressing the truth, and it literally means to hold it down. You should think of that now every time you hear that. It's to suppress that.
Because here's what He's saying, verse 20, since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes and His eternal power and His divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so they're without excuse. What Paul's saying is, all you've got to do is look around, and you understand there's a God. It's like when you go into a restaurant,
and you order a meal, and it's a good meal, and the server's there, and you say to the server, my compliments to the chef. Well, how do you know there's a chef? You didn't see the chef, you weren't in the kitchen. The meal is evidence of the chef. The creation is evidence of God.
So He says in Romans 1, here are these people that are suppressing that truth, and He talks about their depravity. When He gets to chapter 2, He begins to talk about good people who judge bad people. Look what He says in chapter 2, verse 1, "Therefore, you are without excuse. Every man of you who passes judgment in that you judge one another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge, practice the same thing."
There are a group of people who are saying, "God, I want you to get those Romans chapter 1 people, sick them. They are bad people, God, and you go and get them." And what Paul's saying is, the very fact that you judge them demonstrates that you understand that there's a standard, and you're practicing the very same thing they are. You have looked around and said, "Well, God, we're not them, get them, we're okay."
Grading on a Curve
I was not much of a student. Mark Twain said he never let school interfere with his education. And I kind of had that. And when I got to Assumption High School, here's how they graded. 93 to 100 was an A, 85 to 93 was a B, and I'm telling you, if you were 84.99, that was 79 to 85, that's a C, 70 to 79 was a D, and if you got lower than that, they just beat you until you got the D. That's just the way that was.
I got to college, and I was not mature enough, emotionally, to handle college. And I went into a psychology 101 class, and here's what the guy said, it was the first class I was in. He said, "Attendance is not mandatory, there are no quizzes, there will be just a test at the end of the semester, and you'll be graded on that." Well, what I heard was, "What? You don't need to go to class." So that's what I heard.
So I get to the end of the semester, I come in one night, a bunch of guys up, I said, "What are you doing?" They said, "Tomorrow's the psychology class test." I said, "Oh my gosh, I forgot all about that," hadn't been to a class. And so I sat and listened to them, I went and took the test, I knew I didn't do well, but I got, here you go, I got 65, a B. And I was introduced to a new concept. What's the concept? Grading on a curve. I said, "Where has this been all my life? I've been an A student all this time and didn't even know it." It was an amazing deal.
The Human Condition
So I realized that Romans 2, Romans 1, suppress the truth, Romans 2, what they were doing was saying, "Hey God, we're going to grade on a curve. I'm not as bad as them. I'm not perfect. God, I'm not perfect. It would take an extraordinarily egotistical, deluded person to say, I'm perfect. I'm not perfect, but God, I'm not them."
And then in Romans 3, He starts to get to the religious people, to the Jews, and there's His conclusion. In Romans chapter 3, and you should master this, Romans chapter 3, verse 10, "There's none righteous, not even one, none who understands, none who seeks for God, all have turned aside together, they've become useless, there's none who does good, not even one." Those are broad, sweeping terms that get you to His conclusion, Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
He's not saying that we're as bad as we can possibly be, even Hitler didn't kill his mother, but He's saying we're as bad off as we can possibly be. That sin has come into the life of every person that's ever lived and has invaded every area of our life, so that if sin were blue, we'd all be Smurfs. That's what He's saying. A little slow, there's always people from Washington State, it takes them a while to get caught up. The U-Dub guys, they got that right away, Washington State, a little slow. But you get that, right?
God's Initiative, Not Ours
That's the condition of man, and you intuitively want to do something about it. "I'll be good, I'll go to church." Now here's my point. Some of you may be here this weekend on a mission that's part of, "I'll try to fix this." A husband invited you, a wife invited you, in-laws invited you, it's a family tradition, you're stuck, you're here for the crack wheat. Something, you're here, and you go, "I'm going to go through this, I've got to be closer to God at the end of this."
This is not a matter of you drawing closer to God, it's a matter of God grabbing you and coming closer to you. That's why Christ died. He died so that you might have eternal life. So that you will be in a position where you can call Him Lord, Master, Savior.
The Grand Canyon Illustration
But there's a chasm, an infinite chasm, as big as the Grand Canyon. Did any of you watch this guy walk across the Grand Canyon? It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my entire life. I was riveted, in a sense, riveted. We have a TV, I'm a big TV guy, Sandy and I have been married a year, a year and a half, and when we got married, Sandy didn't watch TV, and the first thing I do is turn it on. But I have a TV, and it's like about that size. And I knew this guy was going to do this, I didn't understand the scope of it.
And He got out there, on that wire, and He's on there, remember, and He goes on about ten, I can't even do it without holding on, He's out there about ten, I don't know how He did it, it's the most amazing, He's out there about ten feet, and He says, "There's dust in the wire." And so He licks His, it's unbelievable. I could not, Sandy's sitting there eating popcorn like she's at a movie, I couldn't stay in the room. I'm walking, I'm walking all over. When it was done, literally, I had to go take a shower. I was, it is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my entire life. When they had that photography, where they had the helicopter out, and they took a shot, and you saw him like a little speck in this big canyon, oh my gosh, that's how big the chasm is, infinitely bigger than that, between you and God.
You can't close it. Christ died, that passage in front of you, you've been justified by faith, now we have peace with God. See, that's what's missing in every life. That thing, you can't put your finger on it, that thing that's wrong is sin. Your effort to fix it is to try to bring life into its right perspective.
You're the eye doctor, I'm not good at the eye doctor, because they'll go, "Okay, what looks better, this one, or this one?" And I'm like, "Can you do that again?" And they'll go, "This one, or this one?" And I go, "Okay, one more time." And they'll go, "Tom, it doesn't matter." And I go, "No, I want to get this right." Well, I'm looking at life, and He goes, "What's right, this one or this one?" And you're going, "None of them, none of them make sense, none of them look right."
Everything's messed up, and that's sin. And you sense something's wrong, so here's what you do. You go from job to job to job, girl to girl to girl, guy to guy to guy, house to house to house, sport to sport to sport, place to place to place.
The God-Shaped Vacuum
Because you have longings, different longings. Some are longings, like when we got here today, I was really hungry. And we walked down the street and got a slice of pizza, and by the time I was halfway done with it, I was full. But I know I'll be hungry again, and I know the answer is food.
You have a longing, a crucial longing, that can only be filled with a right relationship with God through Christ. You'll never fill it with a person, place, or thing, though you will naturally try. You see that? You get that? I'm not saying, I'm not asking you now to say you believe it. I'm just saying, you understand that?
See, that's why it just sucks. Anything you turn in to this God-shaped vacuum, anything you put in there, it just sucks it up because it's designed to be fulfilled only through a right relationship with Christ. Now you have peace with God, track with me now, because you have peace with God, you can have the peace of God. All of a sudden now, you're ready to live life.
Saul's Evaluation of Jesus
I want to read you something I, years ago, as I said, my mentor is a guy by the name of Larry Wright. Larry read this, and I found a copy of it, and it's Major Ian Thomas. You know that old Major Ian Thomas guy? He wrote, it's fiction. He wrote, and put himself in the shoes, sandals of Paul, Saul of Tarsus, and Ian Thomas as Saul of Tarsus, making an evaluation of Jesus. Let me read it to you, and then we'll close.
There was a time when as Saul of Tarsus, I made my own independent evaluation of this man called Jesus of Nazareth. I investigated into His life to see if the leader of this Nazarene cult was worth following. I made my own independent evaluation of His worth. I was not unfair, I was not unkind, I applied to Him, Jesus, all the normal, natural standards by which any life in any age is evaluated.
I looked first into His ancestry and discovered there was a cloud over His birth right from the start. As I investigated, it became quite clear that He was an illegitimate son of a faithless woman who'd been taken in by a kind-hearted carpenter, raised as His own son. But He was an outcast from the beginning, and socially, He was worth absolutely nothing.
I investigated His professional standing, and I discovered that He was born of peasant stock and attended no schools. He was raised as a simple carpenter in a village of no standing in Israel, and professionally, He was worth absolutely nothing. As Saul of Tarsus, I investigated His theological and ecclesiastical background. I found that He sat at nobody's feet, that He'd been to no seminary, that He had no theological training. In fact, He was repudiated by all the ecclesiastical authorities of His day. He was nothing but a street preacher, a thumb-thumping rabble-rouser, and as far as His theological standing was concerned, He was worth absolutely nothing.
Furthermore, I looked into His financial standing. I found He had no bank account, that He was born in a cave, laid in a borrowed manger, that He lived in other people's houses, that He was a scrounger, that He was always borrowing things. He borrowed money to pay His taxes. He borrowed His clothes from other people. He rode on a borrowed donkey and died on a borrowed cross, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. Financially, from the standpoint of the world's accumulation of goods, He was worth absolutely nothing.
So, as I investigated and applied to Him the normal standard by which any life is evaluated, I discovered that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, was not worth following. He was worth nothing.
The Damascus Road Reversal
But, on the Damascus road, something happened. There, in a blinding flash of a moment, I looked into the face of a man, and I saw God. I discovered He who I thought to be nothing was Lord of everything. He was the God of glory, and that everything in His made is upheld by the word of His power, that He's behind all things, and He's the very imprint and image of God.
There I found that He who I thought to be nothing was everything, and I, who I thought to be everything, was nothing. In that moment, I came to a tremendous reversal of all the values of my life. Here's the last sentence, and it tees up the rest of our time together.
Later, I learned that I, who was nothing, could be filled with Him who was everything, and that would make my life something.
Looking Ahead
That's what I want to talk about when we get into this tomorrow, is life, the real world. How do we handle adversity? How do we handle affliction? How do we deal with this whole idea of spiritual growth? Lots of practical stuff, but it all flows from this understanding of God and who He is and who I am, and without that entering into that relationship with Him, the rest of this is very helpful advice that will make your life a little bit better, not near what it could be, because Jesus said, "I've come that you might have life," meaning here and now, "and have it abundantly."
That's available to you, and just advice for this world. It can't change your eternal destination.
See, what happened to me on that day, that Wednesday, in that car at McCormick Ranch on March 6th of 1980, is that God changed my destination from hell to heaven. But even bigger than that, to me, He changed my designation from sinner to saint.
If all God wanted to do was get me to heaven, He would have taken me there 33 years ago. If all God wanted to do was get you to heaven, many of you—and I would assume the vast majority of you are followers of Christ—He would have taken you there at the moment you believed. I'm not going to be any more ready for heaven 10 years from now than I am now.
But He left you here for a reason. He said, "I want the world to look at you and see Me. Let them see your good works." What that says to me is that my Christianity is to be visible.
Living as Different, Not Odd
Again, very important. We are to be different, not odd. Some of you seem to take difference to an odd level. Not odd, different, so that when things come into our life, there will be moments when people will watch. That's the great thing about adversity or affliction. It gives you a chance to model a transformed life.
Well, that's what we're going to talk about in the four times we're together: how to stay afloat in a world that's circling the drain.
A Call to Bold Prayer
I want us to pray, but I want us to begin with you just quietly sitting and reflecting and being so bold that you would ask God what you want Him to do this weekend. Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe it's a marriage. Maybe the two of you barely got here. Maybe it's a marriage that needs to be revitalized. Maybe it's a relationship with kids.
I want you to be bold to ask Him what you would like Him to do in you, which is far more important probably than the circumstance. Now I'll close us in prayer. Mila's going to close our time. So let's quietly sit before the Lord and then I'll pray.