New Spiritual Strategies For A Changing World

Tom Shrader presents five essential spiritual strategies for believers navigating a changing and challenging world: fellowship through commitment to local church, learning through Scripture study, giving generously with money and resources, working out salvation through good deeds, and recruiting others by sharing the gospel. Drawing from Acts 2 and other passages, he emphasizes these are timeless principles rather than new innovations.

“You came in with nothing and you leave with nothing and someone more cynical than I has said considering the kind of world it is, you're lucky to break even.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: How to Stay Afloat in a World Circling the Drain (2013)

Recorded: 2013 at Cannon Beach Conference Center

Duration: 56 min

Themes: fellowship, discipleship, generosity, evangelism, scripture, service, commitment, parenting, navigating cultural change, parent, new believer, adult convert, struggling with fear, mentor, church member, facing worldly pressures

Scripture: Acts 2:41-47, 2 Timothy 2:15, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, 2 Timothy 3:16, Luke 12:34, Matthew 6:19, 1 Timothy 6:17, Ecclesiastes 5:10-15, Ephesians 2:8-10, Philippians 2:12-14, John 17:4, John 1:35-42, Hebrews 10:24

Theological Themes: ecclesiology, spiritual disciplines, sanctification, biblical community, stewardship, great commission, spiritual formation, covenant community

Full Transcript

I love the staff here so much. I love kids' night, even though none of them up here are mine, I love to watch them. There's one or two that you need to kind of take out and maybe discipline a little. But they're amazing to watch, and I watch at the same time I watch you watch them. These kids really need you. They need you to be their mom and dad or grandma or grandpa or whatever role you're in. They need you desperately.

In a world that's more and more careening out of control, a world where just the very basic values that we talk about here are under attack - and I'm not big on culture war stuff, but under attack in the world we're in - they need you to be a mom and a dad. They don't need you to be a friend. As I look at parenting, it's interesting now because I've been through it, and I have two daughters that are really at pretty good places. I look back and I see some of the mistakes that I made. One of them was trying to be their friend. I used to say to the girls, listen, I'm not that concerned whether you like me or not. I don't want to be your friend. I'm your dad.

Two Parenting Mistakes to Avoid

I saw a lot of parenting that was done on trying to be a kid's friend. That's a mistake. Then I saw a lot of parenting that I think was fear-based, that was afraid of the world that was out there, especially if you came to Christ as an adult. How many of you in the room came to Christ, let's say, after age 21? Yeah. So keep your hands up. These are the real sinners amongst you right here. Don't brag about it. You can put them down now.

Those are the ones. I observe that my friends that came to Christ as adults tended to parent a lot out of fear, primarily because they knew what kind of kids they were, I think. I came across this a while ago, and I lost it. I was looking for it. I opened up this file tonight. It was there. It makes me think of my daughter, Haley. I said I have two girls - one, Sarah, who's very much like me, and the other is Haley, who's very much like her mom. Haley's just this wonderful kid.

I said to Sandy, we were talking the other day about discipleship and godly people, and what a godly person looks like. I said to Sandy, who do you know that's a godly person? My heart was filled with joy when she said Haley. Of all the people in our sphere of influence, she said Haley.

A Daughter's Introduction

At Haley's graduation from junior high, I was invited to be the speaker. She came in about a week before the event and said, do you know who introduces you? I said, no. She said, I do. I said, really? I said, do you need some help writing the introduction? She said, no.

So I found this the other day. It makes me smile when I see it. This was her introduction: "Our speaker tonight is a man who's very important to me and has had a great influence on my life. He teaches Bible studies to businessmen and women during the week. On Sunday, he's a pastor of a church in Chandler called East Valley Bible Church. In His spare time, He enjoys golfing, spending time with His family. He's a husband, as well as a father of two teenage daughters." Then this was her closing paragraph: "Our speaker tonight is a man who's living proof that if you give your life to Christ, He will do miraculous things. Will you help me welcome my dad, Tom Schrader?"

That was very moving to me. I didn't expect that. She didn't let me see it. This is perfect Haley. So I'm coming up. Haley's here. She puts her head - she's gonna hug. So we hug, she puts her head on this side, and she says, "Don't screw this up."

What Children Really Need

I say that just to offer you - sometimes the parenting thing gets pretty heavy. You have moments like this where your heart is swept away and you see the little kids do the gestures and you're thinking how sweet. Don't be misled by this. They're not all that sweet, but they desperately need you.

They need you more than anything, more than new clothes and more than stuff. They need you to love them. If you're the mom, they need to see you love your husband. Husband, they need to see you love your wife. They need you to tell them about Jesus and then to live it. If you just tell them about it, but you're not living it, it'll take them about a nanosecond to figure out that you're a hypocrite.

That's got nothing to do with the lesson, but that's the impulse I had as I was watching them, and then I found that made me laugh, that thing about Haley.

New Spiritual Strategies for a Changing World

Grab the outline tonight. The series is "How to Stay Afloat in a World That's Circling the Drain." It's actually an eight session series. This is the eighth session, and it's not eighth because it ranks that way. It's probably the most important. The title is "New Spiritual Strategies for a Changing World."

As I said to you this afternoon, though I developed the series in 1991, I did not want to change it, partly to emphasize how timeless things are and how we don't change. There was a book that was published in 1990, and the title of the book was "Megatrends 2000." I remember when I read it, I thought, I gotta put this book somewhere so in 2000 I can see how close the author was.

To my surprise as I started reading the book, there was a section in there on faith, religion, spirituality. The author wrote this, and the quote is on your outline: "When people are buffeted about by change" - and that's what we've been talking about - "the need for spiritual belief intensifies. Most seek reassurance in one of two ways, and they're very different. One, either through an inner directed, trust the feeling inside movement, very subjective, or two, through an outward directed, this is the way it is, authoritarian religion. Both are"

Today we face massive social change. Written in 1990, this observation remains true: In periods of massive social change, the depth of religious experience exceeds organized religion's capacity to invoke it. When things are changing rapidly, as they are now, people tend to go in one of two opposing directions.

One direction is very subjective spirituality. Talk to people and they'll say, "I'm not a Christian, I'm a very spiritual person." I don't even know what that means. It's totally subjective. They define their own right and wrong. They talk about God as He, she, or it according to their mind, and the last thing they want to do is try to convince you that's the way God is. They'll say things like "that's not my God. My God would never..." Voltaire, the French philosopher, wrote one of my favorite quotes: "God made man in His own image, and man has been returning the favor ever since."

The other side is very authoritarian and fundamentalist. People are swaying back and forth between these extremes. During these times, certain tendencies emerge: people stay away from organized religions, and that's only increasing. They like little bite-sized portions—spiritual McNuggets, if you will. They're very leery about financial support, as we referenced this morning. They tend to move toward career over competing priorities. Lastly, they don't want to thrust their spiritual beliefs on you. They don't want to proselytize.

Nothing New Under the Sun

I've titled this "New Spiritual Strategies," but in reality, there's nothing new about this. Samuel Johnson said, "I need to be reminded more than instructed." He's not saying we don't need instruction—he's saying we need to make sure we're following the things we already know. That tends to be my problem. I'm not sure I need more information. I've said it a billion times to the people in my Bible studies: "I don't know how you can keep coming to this thing. How many Bible studies can you go to, especially if you're not doing anything about what you've already been exposed to?"

So when we talk about new strategies, it's the same old thing. In 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 12, from The Message, Peter writes: "Because the stakes are so high, even though you're up to date on all this truth and practicing it inside and out, I'm not going to let up for a minute in calling you to attention before you." He said, "Listen, you're already doing this and you already know it, but I want to keep it in front of you."

Strategy #1: Get Into Fellowship

You have five things on your outline—five new strategies. Number one is to get into fellowship. In Acts chapter 2, beginning in verse 41, Peter has delivered a message and 3,000 people have responded. This is Peter—one of those guys who gets a bad rap. We think of Peter and remember his failures in the gospels. But we tend to think of Peter in the gospels and never get Peter to the book of Acts. It's one of the great redemption stories in Scripture.

Peter gets up in Acts chapter 2, delivers this message, and 3,000 people are saved. Here's what they did, and this is what church should be about: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, the breaking of bread, and to prayer."

When you come to a place like Cannon Beach and have a week like this, or you come to a study in your community like the ones I do in Phoenix, it's important to understand that isn't church. Church has the apostles' teaching and real fellowship—it's living life together. Communion, prayer, structure, elders, living life together.

The Necessity of Corporate Worship

Hebrews chapter 10, verse 24 says, "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another."

Can you be a Christian and not go to church? I think the answer is yes. But by your absence from the local church, you and the body of Christ are weaker. You need to be in this place. Studies tell us that many people now say they have three, four, or five churches. When you ask where they go to church, they say, "Well, it depends. It depends on who's teaching, what's being taught, who's playing, what's the subject."

This sets me off—I don't have many things that bother me, but this one does. I was with a guy who gave me this answer. Here's what I said: "If your kid gets sick and dies, who are you going to call? Because that's the church you belong to. That's where your heart is." You're worse off and the body of Christ is worse off with all this church hopping. You need to be in a place where they know you and you know them, where you can serve.

Looking for the Wrong Things in Church

What's the number one thing you look for in a church? Here are the kind of answers you'll get: easy ingress, egress. That they meet my needs. I feel welcome. Well, that's the Elks. That's the Moose Lodge. They meet my needs. Go to Nordstrom. They'll give you a personal shopper.

You bring your needs and those needs get met, but that's not the driving force. It's where is your soul being fed through the teaching of the word? Where do they take the sacraments seriously? Where do they take their responsibility to you seriously? I don't know your church, but I know this: I'll bet you would be stunned at the time that your staff spends—I'm going to use the word, but cut me slack—worrying about you. Not worrying about your giving. Not seeing you as a giving unit, not as a number, but seeing you as a person.

Their whole desire in having you be engaged in the body is not to manipulate you, use you and throw you away, but to have you come and say, "Listen, I don't get anything out of Sunday." If you've been coming and listening to me teach for three, four, five years, I can't fathom that you're going to get something new out of it. In fact, I'd be suspicious if I heard something new.

You're coming not to see what you can get out of it, but to see what you can put into it. To come with a heart, to be in a position and a place of fellowship. To commit to a local body.

Growing Through God's Word

Here's the second thing: to get learning, to grow. That can happen in a variety of ways. Second Timothy chapter two, verse 15: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, but who correctly handles the word of God."

Look at Second Timothy chapter three. In that is the classic passage that kind of defines what scripture is for us. Second Timothy chapter three, verse 16: "All scripture's inspired by God and it's profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training and righteousness." I want to come back to that, because that's what I want to get at. But look at the context here.

Second Timothy chapter three begins with this, verse one: "But realize, in last days, difficult times will come." Now, are you in the last days? The answer to that is yes. We've been in them since Christ ascended into heaven. The last days are that time between when He left and when He comes again. Are we in the last days? Yes.

Characteristics of the Last Days

Well, what will people be like? See if this doesn't describe—I was going to say you, but the people you know anyway. Men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving. That means there'll be an unnatural affection in their life. Every year in this country, roughly 1.4 million babies are murdered by their mom. That's not natural.

Unloving, irreconcilable. You have that all around you. We can say, "They're separating, irreconcilable differences." I had this not long ago, and I've had this discussion before. Got a husband, wife in there, going to get divorced. "It's what's best for the kids." And I said, "You know, that's a crock. What's best for the kids is you to quit being selfish and love one another. That's what's best for the kids. Best for the kids is not for you to separate." Pretend, obviously when you're apart, you get along better. That's not exactly the challenge here. Irreconcilable differences.

And their malicious gossips. We see that all around us. People are vicious. There's this dark side of curiosity.

A World of Too Many Choices

I had really never been to a grocery store until my wife, Susan, was sick and I had to do the grocery shopping. It was an amazing thing. I don't know if you've ever been to a grocery store. There are amazing places. I got in there and got in one aisle and it was toothpaste. I needed toothpaste. I don't know how long I spent. I didn't know what kind of toothpaste to get. In 1970, Colgate had two types of toothpaste. Today, they have 31.

You have so many choices around you. The choices, rather than been good for you and me, have actually proven to be hard because it makes making a decision tougher. I found gold bond foot powder. I know my dad used to use it, so I bought it. I've never used it. It's been home now for four years. I would go to the grocery store, literally one day, I went for a carton of milk and a loaf of bread and spent $77. A grocery store was an amazing thing.

What I found is as I started to self-check out, because that was it. But when I, the first time I went, I was a little intimidated by that. I've never been to an ATM. I bet I'm the only guy you know who's never been to an ATM. Don't want to know. Feels like a burden. I've never been. So I didn't want to self-check.

The Culture of Malicious Gossip

So I'm checking out and here are all these magazines with all this stuff about the—I don't know what a Kardashian is, but I don't think I want to know. And so Jennifer Aniston has her wedding on. Now Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, they can't get together. It's all this stuff and we believe the worst. It's this malicious gossip. It's words that are spoken and they're hurtful.

These people, let's continue, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Look at verse 5: "But they hold to a form of godliness though they deny its power." They're spiritual people. They want to talk about God as they want Him to be.

He said those are the last days. What is our true north? What is our compass, our roadmap, our anchor in the midst of this?

Scripture's Four-Fold Purpose

It's verse 16. Scripture is profitable for four things: teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. Here's how I like to remember it: The Bible tells us what's right, what's not right, how to get right, and how to stay right.

My daughter Haley - I mentioned before - math was particularly difficult for her, while school was easy for Sarah. I remember I would go for walks at night, and I spent a lot of time with Haley. So I went down and said, "Hey, you want to go for a walk?" She said, "I can't, I'm doing math." I said, "It's not that important, you're never going to use it anyway, let's just go for a walk." She said, "Get out of here, leave me alone." I said, "Well, I'll come back in a little bit and we'll go for a walk."

So I came back and said, "Let's go." She said, "I can't get this." All of a sudden, I remembered when I was in school in math, in the back of the book were what? All the answers. I said, "Hey, when I was in school, all the answers were in the back of the book. Aren't the answers in the back of your book?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Just go back there and get the answer." She said, "I got to know how to do this." I said, "OK, I guess. I don't understand it, but good luck."

Life is an Open Book Test

It was in that context that I realized that in life, it's an open book test, and God's given us right here all the answers. He created you, and this is the operator's manual that you need to begin to learn. That can take place in all sorts of different ways.

I can think of at least three. One is book knowledge. The other is through personal experience, but the tuition is pretty high on that deal. The other is just learning from others' experience. As I said, that's the beauty of history. Paul said - we looked at it this morning - Philippians 4:9, "The things you learn, heard, received, saw in me." You need to be a learner.

So I'll hear, "Well, I'm not a reader." Well, can you read 10 pages a day? Yeah, probably. Well, if you read 10 pages a day for three years, that's 11,000 pages. The average book is 250 pages. That's 44 books. So if I came and said, "Can you read 44 books?" you'd say, "No, not ever." But 10 pages a day - it's like everything else.

One of our young guys came in the other day, and he had seen an article that said it costs now $490,000 to raise a kid. He was traumatized by it. I said, "Here's the good news. They don't ask for it up front. And you can do it for a lot less than that." But you can learn. You need to be a learner.

The Power of Questions

One of the great ways to do it is to ask a lot of questions. I was talking to Jeff this morning after the session, and we were just talking about conversation. He was saying that there was a guy who was here teaching, and he said one of his strengths was he just asked a lot of questions. So you're learning.

Get Into Giving

Here's the third thing. Luke chapter 12: Get into giving. And we're talking here about cash. I'm a YouTube freak. I love to text. I don't like to talk on the telephone. I love to text because you can be short, misspell, and rude, and they expect it in a text. I love YouTube. There is so much stuff on YouTube.

So I'm watching the other night - I don't know why - Flip Wilson. I always thought Flip Wilson, and he's doing Geraldine, was awesome. Well, there's this one where he's the preacher. He's up and he's saying, "This church is dead. This church needs to come to life." They say, "Let it live, Rev. Let it live." "Well, first it has to breathe." "Let it breathe, Rev. Let it breathe." "Then it has to sit." "Make it sit, Rev. Make it sit." "Then it has to stand." "Make it stand, Rev. Make it stand." "Then it has to walk." "Make it walk, Rev. Make it walk." "Then it has to run." "Make it run, Rev. Make it run." "If it's going to run, it needs money." "Let it walk, Rev. Let it walk."

That was one of the old ones. It's got nothing to do with this, other than the money part of this.

Where Your Heart Is

I've said we're naturally hesitant about it, but this dough and what you do with it is a major indicator of where your heart is. If you go to chapter 12, verse 34: "Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also." Talk about loving Jesus, but if you're not invested in Him with your time, energy, effort, and money, I question that.

When we look as a culture, the statistics are pretty condemning. Giving as a percentage of income is lower now than at the heart of the Depression. 32% of Christians in America say that they tithe - that would be 10%. The reality is, based on facts from churches, the number's around 3%. 37% of people - so let's say roughly 4 out of 10 who attend church - give nothing at all.

If I said to you, "I've got a stock, and we've been at it a while, it doesn't look like it's going to work, but we're raising money, would you like to be involved?" I've been in a couple of those. I was in one where they then came back and said, "It didn't work, we don't think we can revive it, but we'd like to celebrate our one-year anniversary. So we're trying to raise a little dough to keep it going between now and then." You're interested in more?

Investing in Heaven vs. Earth

Matthew chapter 6, verse 19: "Don't store up for yourself treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal." He says when I'm investing in this world, I'm investing in a loser. "But store up for yourself treasures in heaven where moth and rust don't destroy, where the thieves don't break in and steal." Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Why? Because basically those treasures are bad investments. They won't last.

First Timothy chapter 6, verse 17: Paul writes this: "Command those who are rich." Now let me stop there because that word's a problem. Here's how I've learned we define that. You define rich as anybody who has more stuff than you. I was with a guy one time, and he was a successful

For whatever reason, and I don't find this endearing, I find it repulsive, he wanted to impress me apparently with how much money he had. He had just done some estate planning and realized his net worth was right around $10 million. For some of you, no big deal. Others of you, that's a lot of dough, and it tends to be a lot of scratch.

So I'm talking to him about his walk. He wants to talk about his faith, and I said, "You know that $10 million, that's a big burden, because here's what Paul writes: 'Command those who are rich...'" He said, "Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, I'm not rich." If you have more than a pair of shoes and more than a place to live and more than today's meal, you're rich.

The Two Dangers of Wealth

Command those who are rich in this present world two things: not to be arrogant or put their hope in wealth which is uncertain. I think there are two assets there. One, when I have stuff, I tend to think I did it. So you may dress it up with some of this "God's just really blessed me." But inside you're going, "Obviously blessed me. He's not going to bless this idiot jerk over here. Look at me." You want to talk about your success, the arrogance of it.

Or the uncertainty of riches. This is a big deal, I think. It means two things. One is that wealth is like a grease pig a little bit - very uncertain. Some of you, five or six years ago, experienced what we might call asset erosion. You lost a boatload of money. Boom, they're gone. That's the uncertainty of riches.

Here's the other thing that's the uncertainty of riches: it won't do what you're trusting it to do. If you're trusting it to make you happy, it isn't going to make you happy. They've done study after study, and they've seen essentially there's no correlation between a nation's wealth and their happiness. In fact, they tend to see as wealth goes up, happiness and satisfaction goes down.

We're All Richer Than We Think

I don't know where you are in the pecking order. Some of you are probably very successful - by that, I mean financially. Some of you barely - you're wearing your net worth, and I am, no kidding. And no matter where you are, you probably have more than you ever dreamed you were going to have.

I talked about my grandma the other day. My grandma and grandpa lived in a place called Melrose, Iowa. It's a town of about 350. My grandpa worked on the railroad. My grandma stayed home. And they lived in a - I don't know what else you'd call it - but a shack.

It had a very small downstairs. In my mind it was small, and you know how they're always bigger in your mind than they are in reality. I can't imagine this thing was 700, 800 square feet. It was a little, little dinky thing. I mean, this right here was the living room. Then there was a bedroom on the first floor, and a kitchen about this size. The second floor was one giant bedroom, and all six kids, boys and girls, slept in that room all the way through, as long as they lived there, all the way through high school.

What I didn't know until we moved my grandma out of there is they rented that shack. They didn't own it. I always thought they owned it.

A Different Generation's Perspective

My dad was the oldest of these six kids. He'd never been more than 50 miles away from home until Uncle Sam said, "I want you," and put him on a boat and sent him to Europe to fight in World War II. He got over there, and he got shot, and came back home. In his mind, he didn't want to stay in Melrose. So he went to Davenport, Iowa.

Now I tell kids this today, and they don't grasp it. He worked full-time at Oscar Meyer, big Oscar Meyer plant, in the kill section. So you used to drive down River Drive, and you would hear those - that was the pigs saying goodbye to you on the way out of town. So he worked at Oscar Meyer full-time. He went to school full-time, and he worked nights full-time at a mortuary because he could sleep in there. It was dead quiet, literally. He could sleep in there at night. He'd get up and go pick up bodies.

We're driving - he came to see me one day, and we're driving in kind of the outskirts, now it's all developed, of Phoenix. We're at a stop sign, and I look over, and my dad's got tears in his eyes. I said - I've only seen him cry one time. The only time I'd seen him cry was November 26th, 1963, at John Kennedy's funeral, when they played Taps. I watched my dad cry. I said, "Are you all right?" "Yeah." I said, "What are you thinking?" And we're at this four-way stop with orange groves all around us. He said, "When I was a boy, once in a while we'd get an orange. I knew oranges grew on trees, but I never thought I'd see one."

We've got televisions. I've got a television this size in my house. You've got a house, you've got food, you're rich. But I don't trust that for happiness. Most of us have been blessed, and I'm talking financially here. Even those who have very little have been blessed beyond their wildest dreams.

Solomon's Wisdom About Wealth

Ecclesiastes - and you should make a note of this, you should study this section on your own - Ecclesiastes 5:10 through 15. Let me read this to you. Here's what Solomon says. Solomon - I don't know how much you know about this guy, but he was a guy that God allowed to experience everything you thought would make you happy. He is this incredible author, he writes music, he writes poetry, he's a connoisseur of wine and art and architecture, sex. He had 300 wives and 700 concubines. A concubine is a woman who existed simply to satisfy his sexual desires. It was the original 700 Club - that's how I remember that. He had three girls a day, every day for the year, and never saw the same girl twice.

Anything you think would make you happy, he's seen it. He sits down at the end of a life and he said, "You know what? Let me tell you, when all this is said and done, it's about loving God and obeying Him."

But in Ecclesiastes 5:10, he says this: "Whoever loves money never has money enough. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied

with his income. You always want a little bit more. As goods increase, so do those who consume them.

How many times have you been with somebody and you've moved them into this home and they say, "This is a great house, we could live here forever"? And then they're calling two years later and say, "Can you help us move?" I thought we could live there forever. Are you moving down? No, we're moving on up.

The more you make—this is a fundamental, basic truth of life—the more you make, the more you spend. If you're spending $50 a week on groceries and you make more money, you'll spend more money. You'll buy better clothes. You'll buy newer cars. And what benefit does it to their owner, except to feast their eyes on it? The more you have, the more you realize it does you no good.

The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep. The hourly guy is stopping for a big gulp to go home and watch "Everybody Loves Raymond," and the boss is down there not sleeping because he can't afford the security guard.

The Temporary Nature of Wealth

I've seen grievous evil under the sun: wealth is hoarded to the harm of its owner, or wealth is lost to misfortune. Here's a life-changing concept from Ecclesiastes 5:15: "Naked a man comes from his mother's womb and as he comes he should depart. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand."

You came in with nothing and you leave with nothing. Someone more cynical than I has said, considering the kind of world it is, you're lucky to break even.

You get into giving. It's a matter of seeing those needs all around you. "Command those who are rich in this world to be rich in good deeds, to be generous, willing to share. In this way they'll lay up for themselves treasures as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that's truly life"—to be a giver.

Jim Elliot's Warning About Accumulated Things

Number four, we've got about 15 minutes, may not use it all. Here's one of my great quotes—before we move on, one of my great quotes. There's a guy by the name of Jim Elliot. Some of you are a smidgen older and have been around the Christian faith for a long time, so how many of you know that name, Jim Elliot? Oh wow, a bunch of you, that's unusual nowadays.

Jim Elliot was this young studly student at Wheaton who was a wrestler, who was brilliant, he was the big man on campus. There was a gal there who we now know as his wife, Elizabeth Elliot. He was contemplating marrying her and I came across this in his diary and he writes this as a 21-year-old boy or man.

I've been musing lately on the extremely dangerous effects of accumulated things. One may have good reason, for example, to want a wife and he may have one legitimately, but with a wife comes Peter the Pumpkin Eater's proverbial dilemma: he must find a place to keep her. Most wives will not stay on such terms as Peter proposed. So a wife demands a house, a house in turn requires curtains, rugs, washing machine, etc. A house with these things must soon become a home and the children the intended outcome.

Now listen to this next sentence—it's counterintuitive but it's profound and it's true. He writes this: "The needs multiply as they're met." A car demands a garage, a garage land, land a garden, garden tools, and tools need to be sharpened. Woe, woe, woe to the man who would live a disentangled life in this century. Second Timothy chapter 2 verse 4 is impossible in the United States if one insists on a wife.

I've 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 and a bed. And even these can become productive of other needs if one does not take heed. Be on guard, oh my soul, of complicating your environment so that you have neither time nor room for growth.

A Prophetic Insight

I want to come back to that, but the next couple of sentences are really weird if you know Jim Elliot's story. If you don't, let me fill in the gaps here. He marries Elizabeth Elliot and then he and a group of four or five guys from Wheaton go to South America and they make this first venture into this Indian tribe to share the gospel, and they're killed.

Now this sentence I'm about to read has nothing to do with what we just read or comes after it. It's just dropped in there and I thought it was so interesting. He said, "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?

When Needs Multiply

I want to go back to the operative phrase: needs multiply as they're met. I want to give you an illustration you'll never forget it. My daughter Haley is afraid of bugs, and that's really interesting now because she's battling scorpions. We've got a lot of scorpions this year it seems in Phoenix, more than I ever remember. She'd see a cricket in a room and she'd say, "Just come and get it."

So I'm home one day and I hear—she's at the front door, she's opened it and I hear, "Ahhh!" So I go over and I said, "What is it?" She said, "There's a spider." I said, "Well, what do you want me to do?" I said, "I'll kill it."

So it's this big plump spider and I step on it, just kind of catch it enough to kill it, but out come dozens of little spiders out of it. I love that reaction. Now you're never going to forget this—great illustration, isn't it?

Needs multiply as they're met. You have this need—you think you have this need. You have a legitimate need for a house. And so you meet that need. But you have to furnish it, if you're in Phoenix you have to cool it, you have to have insurance on it, you have to paint it. I mean, a house is just a sinkhole. It's a roof and it needs a new roof and there's something wrong with it all the time.

The Principle of Contentment

And so in this area of stuff, you need to understand—I've alluded to it a couple times—this idea of contentment, this idea of enough is enough.

Practical Matters and Perspective

Come as a shock to many of you, but every one of your kids does not need their own bedroom. Our student ministry guy, worship guy, has four boys and for a long time, until the oldest was in junior high school, all four boys stayed in one room, because that's all they felt they could comfortably afford. One of those obstacles to giving is, "I can't give because I don't have any money." You need to take an inventory on where that money is being spent.

Get to Work

Number four, you need to get to work. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8, 9, Art talked about it the other night, and verse 10. We tend to talk a lot about verses 8 and 9, but not so much about verse 10. Verses 8 and 9: "For by grace you've been saved through faith, not out of yourself, it's a gift of God, not as a result of work, so no one will boast."

So this is the good news of the gospel: I'm a sinner, separated from God by my sin, and there's nothing I can do to fix it. Salvation is not earned at all by my work or my effort. I'm saved by grace. But works—and I said that to you the first night I spoke—we're a Christian based on what we believe, not how we behave.

Now because we're Christian, it'll change, and that's verse 10. "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works." Philippians chapter 2, verse 12, 13, 14, Paul says to us, "Work out your salvation in fear and trembling." He's not saying work for your salvation, but he's saying if Jesus is Lord, it should make a difference in your life.

Make your life shine in such a way that people see your good works. There was a reference to it on one of the overheads, and it's something I've said every time I've been here for what, 13 years or whatever: when you walk through town with that button on, you're representing not just Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center, you're representing Christ. And people are going to judge you.

My friend Larry Wright used to say this: you may be the only Bible some people ever read. Now that doesn't dismiss their responsibility, but you have a responsibility to get busy. Jesus at the end of His life prayed this in John 17:4: "I have brought glory to You on earth by completing the work You gave Me to do."

What has God given you to do? As I said, if all He wanted to do was get you to heaven, He would have taken you there already. He's left you here for a reason.

Get Into Recruiting

Here's the last thing, number five: get into recruiting, and that is sharing your faith. In John chapter 1, the Gospel of John, John writes this: "The next day John"—this is the Baptist—"was there again with the two disciples, and he saw Jesus passing by, and he said, 'Look, the Lamb of God.' When the disciples heard this, they turned to Him and they followed Jesus, and turning around, Jesus saw them following Him and said, 'What do you want?' They said, 'Rabbi, teacher, where are You staying?' And He said, 'Come, and you will see.' So they went and saw where He was staying, and they spent that day with Him, about the tenth hour. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who followed Jesus. And the first thing Andrew did was to find his brother, Simon, his brother Peter, and tell him, 'We have found the Christ.'"

For many years, I read that passage, and I saw his compulsion to share the faith, but I missed the little phrase, "the first thing he did." There's a sense of urgency to this.

A Personal Story About Urgency

I think I've shared that my wife, Susan, had cancer and was very sick. They determined early on, and by early on I mean a couple of months into it, that the cancer was not operable but treatable, which meant that they couldn't get it, but they would use chemo and radiation. And so it was seven years.

I was stunned at the number of people, who I didn't know, who would come up and say, "I heard your wife's got cancer." "Yes." "Have you tried this?" And they'd have a juice, and they would say extraordinarily stupid things. This is my favorite: they would say, "Do you have a good doctor?" And I'd say, "No, we've got a guy that works out of his van from Mexico. Obviously we've got a good doctor."

People we didn't know were sending us mixers, and vegetables, and all these things, and they're great people, well-meaning. But I used to say to them, "You understand that if she beats this, something else is going to get her. Her biggest problem is not her cancer. Her biggest problem is her sin. Have you spent a second to try to understand if heaven is in their future?"

The Natural Response to Good News

If you went to see a movie, a good movie, a couple of—whatever it was now, maybe six, seven, eight months ago—five times a day, somebody would say, "Have you seen Argo? Have you seen Argo? Have you seen Argo?" Finally, we went and saw Argo, just so I could say, "Yeah, we saw Argo, slept through it all, it was awesome."

If you see a good movie, the most natural thing in the world is to say, "Hey, have you seen this movie? Have you read this book?" The greatest gift ever given mankind is the person of Christ, and He's redeemed you. And there should be in you a sense of urgency to share that with the people around you who don't know Christ.

I was talking to a lady one time, and she's talking about her friend. I said, "Does she know Christ?" She said, "No." And I said, "Have you shared Christ with her?" And she said, "No." And I said, "Well, why is that?" And she said, "Well, I don't want to risk the relationship." And I said, "Isn't that interesting? She's your best friend, and you love being with her, so you'd rather have a few years here with her than all of eternity."

What God Really Cares About

Here's what God cares about. He doesn't care that you win people to Christ. He cares that you proclaim the gospel to them. Now that has to be done in word and deed. There's the great old quote from, I think it's Francis that says, "Preach the gospel, and if you must, use words." That's stupid.

The gospel requires behavior, but it has to be proclaimed. No one's ever been won to Christ through a wordless sermon alone. You make the invisible God visible, and then you speak.

The Truth That Makes Us Different

The truth boldly. People come to you and say, "There's something different about you. What is it about you?" And you have to go, "Jesus." There's this point where you share this truth, and that's the reality.

As I talked last night about kind of a dark world, the reality is our hope is Christ. To be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord. D.L. Moody was on his deathbed when He reportedly said, "Soon you will read in the newspaper that I'm dead. Don't believe it for a moment. I'll be more alive than ever before."

Basic Spiritual Strategies for This World

In this world, there are some very basic strategies, spiritual strategies, for you and for me: to be involved in church, to be involved in giving, to be involved in fellowship, to be sharing this gospel truth. You've been prayed for for a long time by the people here at Cannon Beach. I haven't prayed for you because I didn't know I was going to be here. But my prayer since we've come is this: that someday in the future, you'll look back on this week, and you will say, "It was during that time at Cannon Beach that God did something in my life, drew me closer to Him, closer to my spouse, closer to my kids."

The Answer to Our Dark World

It's a dark world, but you have the answer. The answer is Jesus. The answer is to grow close to Him. The fundamental problem that we have in the country is not economic or political. It's not educational. The fundamental problem we have in the country is spiritual. Our hearts are darkened to the things of God.

And He's put together an army, an army of Gomer Pyles, frankly. That's what He says. I didn't get the best and the brightest. Got guys like us, and He says, "We're going to take on the world." Maybe not every battle and victory, but we're going to be true to this Word. We're going to do what's right. And God will take care of the results.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for this awesome truth. These are spiritual realities we have. Let us be people. Help us understand that Christianity isn't one size fits all. Some of us are going to be fully involved in certain things and not in others, and other people are going to say, "No, no, no. This is my deal." God, You've made us a body. Some are hands or feet or eyes or elbows or knees. God, You've put us together. We can't go it alone. We need each other, dependent upon one another. Knit our hearts together and use us for Your honor and Your glory. We pray here, tonight, now, in Jesus' name, amen.