New Spiritual Strategies For A Changing World

Tom Shrader addresses how to maintain spiritual momentum after a conference or retreat experience, drawing from Acts 2:42-47 to outline five essential practices for ongoing Christian growth. He emphasizes that these aren't new concepts but proven biblical strategies: engaging in real fellowship and community, committing to continuous learning through Scripture and good books, practicing generous giving as a reflection of spiritual health, working out salvation through meaningful service, and actively sharing faith with others.

“Our faith is a deeply personal matter, but it's not a private matter.”

— Tom Shrader

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

Recorded: 2013 at Cannon Beach Conference Center

Duration: 1 hr

Themes: fellowship, growth, service, generosity, evangelism, community, learning, perseverance, post-retreat transition, maintaining momentum, conference attendee, young believer, ministry worker, struggling with consistency, seeking accountability, returning to routine

Scripture: Acts 2:42-47, Romans 8:28, Hebrews 10:24, 2 Timothy 2:15, 2 Timothy 3, Luke 12:34, 1 Timothy 6:17-19, Ecclesiastes, Ephesians 2:8-10, Philippians 2:12-14, John 1, John 9

Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual formation, discipleship, ecclesiology, stewardship, witnessing, biblical community, spiritual disciplines

Full Transcript

Good place to stop and go home right there. That's better. Yeah, amen. Yeah, I still gotta do this.

So you've got outlines, and the one in front of you says session eight. I think this series was, as I said, when we did it in 1990, I think might've been a 10 session series, I don't know. I know this is by far the most important of the sessions. So I deliberately arranged it this way so that we could close with it.

The Problem of Self-Awareness in Ministry

I was talking to Sandy a while ago. I spend a lot of time with young men and young men who are ministry guys, guys who want to preach. They don't necessarily want to work, but they want to preach. And that's a little bit of a problematic thing. We find out with most of the young guys we get, the first thing we gotta teach them is to work. It's a commodity that's met, that's kind of left them.

They want to preach and they say, how can we get better at this? And one of the things you have to have—this is a very hard thing to get—is self-awareness, is to get an accurate view of yourself. So we've got a guy on our staff who cannot preach. He cannot teach, he's not good. And his—yeah, I know, he said, why do you keep him? Well, we've moved him to another area. But his answer was, "I could be better, what?" What do you think he said? Yeah, just let me teach more. I said, if you teach much more, you're gonna solve our parking problem and every other problem we have because everybody left. You're not very good at it.

But the guys that are pretty good, what I try to tell them is to do a lot of what I call away games. They have a tendency to preach in a friendly environment. I remember one year I did 25 events like this—men's conferences or family conferences or couples conferences—every other weekend, 25 of those. And you learn very quickly how to adapt, how to change, how to move, how to connect, what works. And you see after a while a pattern.

Starting From the Foundation

That's why we started the first night by trying to get on the same page, really talk about what does it mean to be a Christian and to make sure that we start from that. Because the rest of this stuff is helpful, but it's only helpful to the extent that you have the power of the Holy Spirit in you.

I've also learned, now this is an abbreviated week, so it might be a little bit different. This feels like we just got started to me and we're stopping, that's how it feels. Some of you have been here all week.

The Challenge of Returning to the Real World

But there's this time now where we talk about leaving and going back to the what? Real world. Sometimes this doesn't last long, this moment. These are those mountaintop—if you'll allow the expression at a seaside place—a mountaintop experience that lasts till you get to about Seaside. You go and order a latte, they screw it up, you blow up, and that's the end of this incredible spiritual experience that you had. You didn't make it past the Nike outlet mall and you screwed this up.

But for most of us, I get tense. I'm not a very good traveler. Sandy's amazing. One of the things that, again, I learned about her real quickly is that we traveled well together. I'm high maintenance, I don't like to have things, I don't like, I get nervous about boarding passes and I'm convinced that they think I'm part of Al-Qaeda. I don't know, I don't do well traveling and so it will be good, somebody drives us back to the airport, that'll be good.

And once we get in Portland, you may be so close to it that you don't realize it, but Portland is like one of the easiest airports in the country, at least from my perspective, to work through. So we'll get through, but then we get home. I just checked, temperature Sunday, 111, Monday, 111, Tuesday, 111, Wednesday, 111. We leave Friday and now we're gone pretty much the rest of the summer, so that's cool. Well, cooler than 111 anyway.

The Pattern of Spiritual Life

But you have this moment and it's how do you sustain this? That's been my experience in virtually everything and everyone I've ever talked to. We were talking the other night at the table about a guy by the name of Bob Craning and Bob was the executive director at Forest Home for a long time. He was actually the guy who called me and said, would you ever go up to Cannon Beach and teach? And I said, well, tell me what it's like and he mentioned ocean and all the stuff. I said, sure, and Janet contacted me, I don't know, it was like 15 years ago and we've been here every year since.

And the last time I had breakfast with Bob, I said, what are you working on? And Bob's now 80 probably, late 70s. And he said, I'm working on finishing strongly. And you would think that this Christian life would be such that it would, I don't know the expression is get easier, but that it would kind of continue, that it would grow, that it would build.

And yet it isn't like this, if we were to chart it like a stock. It isn't like this, is it? At least not in my experience. It's kind of like this, for me anyway, and then flatten, maybe a little drift and then a shot up.

Thoughts on Writing and Spiritual Rebooting

I'm not a writer. One of the things now that people ask is I'm kind of winding down the teaching part on Sundays is why don't you write? It's amazing to me that they would say, write a book like it's a normal thing. What am I gonna say? This would be the title I think I'd use. I've got a couple of them. One is "You're Not the Exception." I think that's a great title because everybody thinks they are. But the other one is "Rebooting Your Spiritual Life." And this kind of fits in that category.

I told you I deliberately did not redo outlines on this so that you'll see a talking about the 1980s and tendencies that we saw spiritually. In 1990, there was a book published and the title of that book was "Megatrends 2000." And I remember reading it and saying, okay, I'm gonna take this book and put it aside because John Naisbitt and Patricia, I can't remember her last name, Aberdeen maybe, had made some bold projections.

And I thought it'd be really interesting in the year 2000 to see how close they were. And in this book, there was an entire section on spirituality. I think the quotes on the outline. It says this: when people are buffeted about by change, they need a spiritual belief and it intensifies. Most seek reassurance in one of two ways. One, and they're polar opposites, either through an inner directed "trust the feeling inside" movement or two, through an outer directed "this is the way it is" authoritarian religion. And that's exactly what we've seen. One is more, the number one on this, is more prominent than two.

When you talk to people, this is a basic fundamental truth. Everyone is a theologian. Oprah, I love Oprah. I think Oprah is really cool. And I like listening to her. She's a little whacked on some stuff. But Oprah has a phrase that she uses all the time. And then everybody makes it into a bumper sticker and everybody says it. And so here's what Oprah says. Oprah says, everything happens for a reason.

The Profound Implications of Popular Theology

And people say this all the time. Well, think with me, I would love to spend some time with Oprah and go, you know, you say that all the time. Tell me what you mean by that. Because the implications are profound. Because if everything happens for a reason, there must be someone or something that's in control. And that someone or something must be all-powerful, must be all-knowing.

Romans 8:28 says, "And we know God causes all things to work together for good." If that's the only verse we have, a one-verse Bible, we know God is all-knowing and all-powerful because He can move things, but He also knows what's going to take place in the future. If He was all-powerful but not all-knowing, He'd be going, "Oh, wow, wow, I didn't know that. I would have done something about it if I knew it." Or if He was all-knowing and not all-powerful, He'd go, "No, no, Tom, Tom, Tom, don't do that." But if everything happens for a reason, that tells you an awful lot about something. Now, we know from the Scripture that God is in control.

But the majority of people today, if you go down to Seaside and you interview, you'd never get to 100, but let's say you interview 10 people and you start to talk to them about God and theology, we used to have a dog named Rudy. Yeah, no, I wasn't a big fan, but we had a dog named Rudy. And the longer you talk to Rudy, here's what Rudy would do. He'd go bark. And you listen to some of these people and you say, "Tell me about God." And all of a sudden, you're going, what, where did you get that? And everyone does what's right in their own mind. That's what you see.

The Two Spiritual Movements

The other is, and I think it's been the key to our ministry in Phoenix. The other is authoritarian, but in the right sense, that we're very bold when people come to our church to say, we're glad you're here. And we know you came with questions and you came to the right place because we have answers, not because we're so smart, but because life is an open book test.

Right here, my daughter, Haley, was a very serious student. And I was constantly, because I'm not, and I used to tell her, and she was doing geometry. And I said, "Haley, you're never going to use this stuff. Sit next to somebody smart and get a C and just be happy." And so I'm in there one night and I said, "Haley, let's go for a walk." "I can't go for a walk, I got math to do." And I said, "Let's go for a walk." "No, go away, I mean, get out of here." And so finally I went down and I'm thinking, when I was in school and in math, what was in the back of the book? The answers. So I went back, I said, "Haley, aren't all the answers in the back of the book?" And she said, "Yeah." And I said, "Well, look back there and get the answer and put it in there and let's go for a walk." And she said, "Get out of here. I got to know how to do this."

Here you go. Life may appear confusing to you, but it's an open book test and here are all the answers. And so when people come to us, we are not shy about saying we have the answers, not because we're so smart, but we know where to look.

Modern Attitudes Toward Organized Religion

So in the 80s and really most time, and you'll see on the left-hand column, and it's like we've done with all the outlines, we want to get to the end, but just along the way, people have a tendency to shy away from organized religion. Even Christians, Barna says that the average Christian now attends three to five churches. We see this all the time. And I don't think we're control freaks, but one of the problems that we see with people is they go from church to church to church. They hop around based on who's teaching, what they're teaching, is the room new? We're redoing our big meeting room. And we know that when that's done, we'll see a spike in people who are coming because they want something new.

And I'm with a guy the other day and he's kind of, "Well, we go to the Gilbert campus and we go to the Gateway campus. And sometimes we go to another church and another church." And I said, "Here you go. If your kid got hit by a truck and was laying in intensive care, who would you call? Because that's your own church." But people kind of in general, they stay away from organized religion. They like little bumper stickers. And I don't have a problem with that.

The Challenge of Competing Priorities

People buy big books, but they read little books. They're very weary of their money and their financial support. There's an emphasis over career and competing priorities. Here's what I discovered. I had a friend, he was very insightful. I said to Him one day, I said, "Have you read any good books?" He said, "I don't read good books anymore." He said, "I only read great books. There's a lot of good books."

My den, my bookshelves, our house, my office is filled with good books. That's the biggest challenge I have. Is to try to figure out what's worthwhile. I'm a slow reader. And I have to read the same sentence a time or two. And then after I finish about 10 pages, I got to go back and read it again. I don't remember.

Alzheimer's bar. Hey baby, do I come here often? I don't mean—if that offends you, I'm sorry. I used that up in Canada and there were some people who were wound up pretty tight up there. I got a long single page letter saying that was disrespectful. If that offends you, I apologize. But it popped into my mind and the filter's gone by the end of it.

So I want these great books. And in your life, here's something you have to learn to do. Many people cannot do this—you have to triage your life.

Learning to Triage Your Life

I don't know what it was, a couple of weeks ago, I had some pain right in here. I've had that before and I said I'll be fine. Sandy went to a meeting and it intensified. I have a great doctor—the world's greatest doctor. I texted him and said, "Steve, here's what's going on." Maybe thirty seconds later, the phone rang. He said, "Take me through it."

So I took him through it. He said, "You need to get in here right away." So I went in and he said, "You're sick." I said, "I know that, but I got a problem down here too." He said, "Well, I want you to go to the emergency room." I said, "I'm not an emergency room guy. I hate to go to the—if I'm going to the emergency room, I want to be sick." He said, "Well, you're sick."

So I went in there and by the time I got there, Sandy had gotten there. They took some x-rays and I had kidney stones here and here on both sides. I didn't feel these so much. The next day he said, "You need to get to your urologist." This is a lot more than you want—you don't want to hear this. I can tell you what they did, but we'd have to get married at the end of this thing. Whatever invasive is, that's what they did next.

So I call a urologist who I don't have the relationship with like I do my doctor. I get the nurse and I said, "Here's what's going on." She said, "Well, he's just really busy." She said, "Are you in pain?" I said, "I've been taking Percocet for a day. I can run a marathon. I feel great." "Well, we got to get you in." She said, "Let me give you to the triage nurse." What that nurse was doing was taking each one of us that would call in and saying, "Okay, you got to get to the top of it." I got in the next day and he did his deal in the hospital and all that.

Here's what you've got to do—you have to be able to triage your life. There are a lot of things that are available to you that are very good, but you can't do them all. Sandy's working on some projects, and one of them is dealing with women and women in the workplace. Can a woman have it all? The discussion frosts me a little bit because a man can't have it all. I run into guys all the time and they go, "I want to be successful in business. I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good dad. I want to be in good physical condition." You can't do it all. So you have to be able to triage your life.

Faith: Personal But Not Private

In religion, they like this idea of avoiding any sort of proselytizing. Really key—this is one of the things you write down. Our faith is a deeply personal matter, but it's not a private matter.

I'm doing a little bit of projects myself where it might tend to be more history. In 1960, John Kennedy was running for president. He went to Houston, Texas to address a group of Protestant pastors because the issue was, "You're a Catholic—is the Pope going to run the country?" Kennedy said, and this is essentially a quote, "I won't let my faith affect the way I govern." I remember as an eleven-year-old kid going, "Well, that doesn't sound right." Our faith is the most deeply personal matter we have and it ought to affect everything we do.

Can you imagine interviewing somebody for a job? Now you can't ask them this—HR would have you in all sorts of problems. But you're talking and you say, "You look familiar. I've seen you somewhere. Oh yeah, you go to that Redemption Church, don't you?" "Yeah." "Great church, isn't it?" "Yeah, that Tom's really good, isn't he?" "Yeah, he's amazing." You have this conversation. Then the guy says, "Listen, I feel a little awkward here, but I want you to know, I go to Redemption Church, but it won't have any effect on the kind of employee I am." It's a total disconnect. Our faith is deeply personal, but not private.

Back to the Beginning: Acts Chapter 2

So here's what I want to ask you to do. Open your Bibles to the book of Acts and to the second chapter. We're going to look at the beginning of the church. We're going to give you what we've called new spiritual strategies. I hate that—there's nothing new about it.

I find in spiritual things, and it's in all of life, everybody's making everything way too complicated. I'm talking to a guy the other day and he said he bought a new car and he got a CD that tells him how to operate the air conditioner and the radio. He said, "Why ought it not be this tough?"

I'm watching an interview with Arnold Palmer. I like Arnold Palmer. He's talking about teaching his grandson how to play golf. His grandson's asking him all these questions and Arnie's going, "I don't know. I don't know about all these angles and the degree of my—just set up, grab the club." There's only one—the only connection between you and the club are your hands. So you get your grip right and you set up right and then just swing it. But we make everything complicated, including spiritual things.

There's not a week goes by that I don't meet with somebody who says, "I want to go deep in the faith." I say—this may be lost on you, but I say—Larry Fitzgerald goes deep. He's a wide receiver for the Cardinals. Larry Fitzgerald goes deep. By deep, what they mean is something they've never heard. I'm very suspicious.

Into Real Fellowship

As you look at Acts chapter two, let me read you what Peter writes in Second Peter chapter one, verse 12. "Because the stakes are so high, and even though you're up to date on all this truth and practice it inside out, I'm not going to let up for a minute in calling you to attention before you." It's a paraphrase from The Message. It's very interesting what he says. He says this: you already know it and you're doing it, but I'm still going to come at it again.

We've got probably about a half hour left. I'm going to give you however many things are on your outline. How many are there? Five or six. The chances of these being new to you are zero, but the chances that they're important to you is absolutely 100%.

Acts 2: The Foundation of Community

Number one: get into real fellowship. Acts chapter two—what's happened is Peter has just delivered this amazing sermon. 3,000 people have been saved. Acts chapter two, verse 42: "They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. And everyone kept feeling this sense of awe and many wonders and signs were taking place."

Verse 46: "And day by day, continually with one mind, they were in the temple breaking bread from house to house and they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart. They were praising God and they were having favor with all the people and the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved." They're living this Christian life.

The Need for Deep Conversations

One of the things that I noticed about this short week is I did not, other than one or two kind of surface conversations, have many deep conversations with any of you. Normally in a week, what happens is I'll have a series of serious conversations and it's almost always somebody complaining about their church. It's really interesting. It's like I'm the counselor that you can talk to and they assume I know it.

Let me tell you what's wrong. Listen, if you're in a church, here's what you need to be looking for. Barna's got it, I've got it here. Barna said that the top three things that people look for in a church are in order of importance: number one, parking; number two, caring and sharing; number three, have your needs met. Well, that sounds like a mall to me. Nordstrom's meets my needs. Caring and sharing—boy, you go to Neiman Marcus, they'll care for you.

What to Look for in a Church

What should I be looking for in a church? It's those elements that you see in Acts 2:42. There's the apostles' teaching. I think that's at the top of the list. And there's this idea of fellowship, community. They're living life together. It's what we really talked about this morning.

Most churches, if they're older churches, have this place in the campus that's dedicated to this. It's called what? Fellowship Hall. Apparently nowhere else do you fellowship except in this building. And it generally kind of revolves around high caloric food. It will be something like this: "How are you?" "Good. You?" "Good." "How's life?" "Great. You?" "Good." "How's your kid?" "Special." "Yours?" "Better." And I mean, that's kind of the depth of the conversation.

He's talking about living life together. These are pilgrims who got saved in Jerusalem. They're there, no money, no ATM. They're selling stuff that they have and taking care of one another. And when the world sees this, verse 47, they are gaining extraordinary favor with them.

Spurring One Another On

Hebrews chapter 10, verse 24, the author of Hebrews writes this: "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good works. Let us not give up meeting together as some do, but let us encourage one another."

Sandy and I were at a joint venture between FCA and PAO—Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Pro Athletes Outreach. And it was a coaches conference in Phoenix a couple of months ago. And they always have somebody who does Bible, that was me, and somebody who did marriage and family. And they were from up this way. Don't remember the name. What is it? Yeah, I don't know. They got like a hundred kids. Pritchard? Yeah, that was it. They had like a hundred kids. They were there. Eleven, man, that's a hundred. If you go from zero to 11, that's a hundred.

Coaching Through Slumps

And so somebody does family, somebody does Bible, somebody does finances. And on this one, they had somebody who did coaching. And this guy was a coach. You can get a master's degree in coaching and leadership from the University of Central Florida. This guy was awesome. And He was talking about—maybe think of this verse, "spur one another on"—He was talking about what do you do with an athlete who's in a slump?

So you got a kid, and all of a sudden, He can't hit a curve ball. It'd be like me. I'm a left-handed hitter, more batter than hitter. And there's a little kid by the name of Ricky Salas. And Ricky used to pitch. He'd spit between—that's how He spit. And He was left-handed. And it felt when I came up there, He was out in here. It felt like His hand was going to hit me. And my first move was always, "Whoops, there I go," like that. I can't even hit it when He's not here.

What do you do with a kid that can't hit a curve ball anymore? And He did what I thought you'd do. You kind of look at mechanics. And then He said, you reminded Him He used to do it. And then He said this. He said, then you have Him watch a kid hit a curve ball. Then you have a kid—all of a sudden, He used to be very loose with His motion. Now He's short-arming it. What do you do? You remind Him, get that elbow down, how to drop it. But then you watch Him, let Him watch a kid that's hit that pass over and over again. You got a shot. You used to be able to hit a high fade. Now you can't hit a high fade. Remind Him He can do it, and then watch somebody hit it.

And I thought of this: "Let us spur..."

Sometimes you just need to be with people to be able to see them live life, to be reminded that life can be difficult, but you can do this. They just need to be with you.

I had a couple that came to meet with me one night, and they said, "We were talking about having kids. We think we want to have kids." I said, "Well, can't help you with that. I assume you know what happens and how all that..." "Well, we got that, we got that. We're just not sure we want to have them or not." And I said, "Why is that?" And they said, "You're the only guy we've ever seen speak publicly and positively about having kids."

I loved being a dad. I loved it. I loved my kids. They were fun to be with. When they were small, I didn't want them to get bigger because I thought every stage has been better. It was amazing when they could start to dialogue, and then my daughter Haley, and the way I describe it, she was this little cheerleader, cute gal, smart gal, never had a date in all of high school. She and I, like every Friday night was date night for us. We just hung out together. First guy she ever dated was a guy I fixed her up with and they now have four kids. Pretty good. But to be able to say to these young husband and wife, "You're going to love having kids. It's tough, but it's worth it."

Learning From Those Who've Lived It

I found this the other day. My daughter Haley, her eighth grade graduation, I was the commencement speaker. And so she came home and she said, "You know who introduces the commencement speaker?" And I said, "No." And she goes, "Well, I am." I said, "Wow, you need help writing a speech?" And she said, "No, no, I can do this."

And I found this the other day. Here's what she wrote: "Our speaker tonight is a man who's very important to me. He's had a great influence on my life. He teaches Bible studies to businessmen and women during the week. And on Sunday, he's the 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."

Here's the closing paragraph of her introduction: "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 please help me welcome my dad, Tom Schrader?" And as I'm walking, and I'm a mess, okay? She's reading this, I'm a mess. And Haley's awesome. We're walking off and she gets between me and the group and she gives me a hug and everybody's going on. She goes, "Don't screw this up." It's vintage Haley, it's just absolutely perfect.

So I know there are times where you're saying, "Is it worth it?" And here's what I'm saying to you. Yeah, it really is.

Serving Others Through Fellowship

There's this idea of you need to be in fellowship. It's not you going on Sunday and saying, "What am I going to get out of this?" It's what are you going to put into it? What are you people going to see? You're there to be able to serve them, especially in a situation where we have so many young men and women in our church that never had a dad, never saw normal anywhere around them.

And I will tell you this, to those of you who are older, I'll tell you this. This younger generation is dying for people like you to pour into them. You don't need to teach them a Bible lesson, teach them a life lesson. I was talking to one of the young kids the other day and they were talking about John Kennedy getting killed. And I said, "Let me tell you where I was." I said, "You were alive then?" I don't know if they thought it was Lincoln or what they thought it was. "Yeah, I was alive. What was it like? What was he like? What was the country like?" It's living life with Him. That's what this fellowship is. It's hanging out. It's building one another up. It's having somebody have a conversation with you. And when they walk away, they want more of it.

Those of you, by the way, that are trying to find a way to connect with your grandkids, I'll tell you the magic way to do it. Text them. I'm a text fiend. I love to text. And the boys will start texting in the morning. Haley will be texting me stuff. One of them texted me a note the other day: "You know you're a mom when somebody says their stomach hurts and you ask, 'Have you pooped yet today?'" I mean, it's just stuff all day long. I go, "This is really good. Where do you get this stuff?" But I'm telling you, you have a 12 or 13 year old grandkid. You may think, and she may think, or he may think he's really cool. But if they're sitting at school and they get a text from you, let me tell you what they're doing. They're saying to the rest of the kids, "I just got a text from my grandpa. I just got a text from my grandma." And I'll tell you what, it's not that tough to do. Ding, ding, ding, send. You can figure this out.

The Importance of Learning

Here's the second thing. You need to get into learning. Second Timothy. Second Timothy is a great book. I love that book. That's Paul at the end of his life writing to the guy that I would argue he loves more than anybody on earth and giving him really this father-son conversation. Knowing as he writes, he tells you, "The time for my departure has come. I'm not going to probably see you again. Come quickly." In Second Timothy chapter two, verse 15, Paul writes this: "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of the Lord." Learning.

I was not a reader. The first book I ever read in my life was my junior year of college. And it was a book by a guy by the name of Jose Torres who was a light heavyweight champion of the world. And it was a book about Muhammad Ali. So I wasn't cracking the classics when I started. I never read books. I had a lot of them, but never read one. And when God saved me in 1980, one of the things that He did is He changed my appetite to read. Now it's even easier than then. Then you really had to read. Then you could listen to

You Need to Be a Learner

There's information everywhere. You need to be a learner. Think with me for a second. Could you read 10 pages a day? Yes. Let's say you can read 10 pages a day. That's 3,600 pages a year. Average book, 250 pages, that's 14 books in a year. If I came in January with a stack of 14 books and said, "Can you read this?" you'd go, "I don't think so." But 10 pages a day? If you're committed to this?

Continue chapter three of 2 Timothy. "Realize this, in the last days, difficult times will come." He's talking about that time from when Christ ascended till He comes again. "For men will be lovers of self and lovers of money. Verse five, holding to a form of godliness but denying its power." There'll be spiritual people who want to talk about spiritual things and spiritual journey and mysticism, but they deny the power. The power's the person of Christ. You have to be learning.

There was a great mind, arguably considered by some the greatest mind that America ever produced. Probably that would go to Jonathan Edwards, but in that top tier would be Thomas Jefferson. If you go to a Barnes and Noble or go online to Amazon, you can order the Jefferson Bible. Have you ever seen it? It's a little book. What Jefferson did was take the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John—and then he did what you've wanted to do. He took out all the stuff he didn't like. He took out anything mystical, anything supernatural. And what's left is what he called the ethical teaching of Jesus.

Here's the problem. Nobody was ever saved by the teaching of Jesus. We were saved by the death of Jesus. So the Jefferson Bible ends with, "They placed Him in the tomb and rolled a stone in front of the opening." That's the end. There's no hope in this without something supernatural.

Reading This Word and Books That Help You Understand It

You need to be reading this word and books that are going to help you understand this word and the human condition. You just told me you could read 14 books in a year. It's living life. Job goes through all this stuff. And if you don't know anything about the Bible and hardly know anything about Job, you know of the patience of Job. Job didn't have the patience of Job till the end of that book. It's in chapter 42, where he says to God, "Before I've heard about you, now I've seen you." This Bible is a treasure that God's given us. It's His mind.

What do I need to learn? Well, I'd like to understand life. One year, we had an incredible vacation. We started in San Diego, went to the zoo, went to SeaWorld, then up—and it was summer. So I didn't want to go to Disney. So we went to Knott's Berry Farm. I went and saw the Phantom of the Opera. Well, Knott's Berry Farm, I'd never been there before. And they had in the middle—I don't know if it's still there—they had the coolest thing. They had this human maze. You walk into it and it's a maze. And then up above was like this place where you could watch people.

For somebody like me, it was perfect because you're just watching people walk into walls and they don't know what to do and they can't get out and they get frustrated. And it was a little boy in there and he was lost. Every place he went was a dead end. And I didn't realize it, but his mom was right next to me. And she said, "Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, here you go now. Make a left, go down that, oh, go right, go left, go right." And in about 30 seconds, she had him out of there.

You get times in your life where you're in a maze and it's dead end, dead end, dead end. And all of a sudden, God says, "Let me do this. My ways are higher than yours. Let me give you this perspective that you need on life." You need to be a learner.

You Need to Get Into Giving

Here's the third thing. You need to get into giving. And we're talking about cash, resources. Luke chapter 12, verse 34: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." My money should follow my heart. My money and how I handle it is symptomatic of a spiritual condition.

The average giving among Christians in this country right now is a lower percentage than at the height of the Great Depression. Thirty-two percent of Christians say they tithe, meaning 10%. The reality that churches tell us is that number's closer to 3%. A typical Christian gives 2.3% of their income to charitable, presumably Christ-related endeavors, and an average American gives 2.4% of their income.

I talked about this before. It's 1 Timothy 6:17-19. "Command those who are rich in this world not to become arrogant or put their hope in the uncertainty of riches." The uncertainty that they can be here, and then they're gone. There are a whole bunch of you in this room who experienced five years ago—here you go, how's this sound?—asset erosion. You lost a bunch of money. That's the uncertainty of riches, but also in this world. Jesus said, "Don't invest where moth will destroy, rust will take away." He said, "Here's the problem with investing in the world is that it's gone, it's temporary."

The Problem with Loving Money

I'll give you a great study. I'll give you an overview of it here in two minutes. It's in the book of Ecclesiastes, and Solomon lays out some amazing truths. Here's what he says, beginning in verse 10: "Whoever loves money never has enough of it, and whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with the income." Verse 11: "Because as goods increase, so does your consumption." The more you have, the more you spend.

Some of you were in that experience when you started in life, when you moved into this house, and it drives me nuts when people say this: "This is a starter home." They've already cranked into their mindset an accelerated lifestyle. How many times—and I used to do it a ton—I don't help people move anymore because it seemed like every weekend somebody was moving. And we'd move, and then we'd sit around, we'd have Diet

Coke and pizza, and the husband and wife would say, "We could stay in this house forever." Two years later, they're calling, saying, "What are you doing on Saturday? Can you help us move?" I thought that lasted forever. Oh, not now, we have a new kid. A new kid means a new bedroom. We've only got three bedrooms, we got two kids. We're out of house.

I read some statistics the other day. I sent them to myself in my email, and I can't find them, but it said the average family is 17% smaller than it was in 1980. The average house is 17% bigger. That's my big fear: contentment.

The Illusion of Satisfaction

Solomon goes on and says in verse 11, "What benefit is it except that you feast your eyes on it?" There's a great story of William Randolph Hearst. He was prone toward big, dramatic gestures. He's going through a book, and he found a painting, and he fell in love with this painting, and he said, "I have to have it."

So he took the curator of one of his museums, and he put him to work on it, and he said, "Find this painting and buy it." The guy came back two or three weeks later and said, "I can't find it." So he hired private detectives who went all over the world, and they came back and said, "Mr. Hearst, we can track this until about five or six years ago, and it's gone. We don't know where it is. It's disappeared." A year later, they found it in his basement. He already owned it.

The more I have, I just have to have it. That's what Solomon's saying. Or wealth, it's lost through misfortune. There's the temporariness of all of this.

The Tyranny of Things

We live in a time and in a place where people have indulged themselves to the point that it's become a spiritual issue. Randy Alcorn writes about the tyranny of things. He said, "Nancy and I lived in our house for 23 years. For the first nine years, we had ugly orange carpet. Never cared what happened to it. The day we finally installed a new carpet, someone lit a candle, and the match fell on it, and burned a hole in the carpet. The day before, we wouldn't have cared. Now we're upset. Were we better off with nice new possessions?"

"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 buy an antenna to hook up or subscribe to cable. I buy a DVD player. I rent movies. I get surround sound. I buy a recliner so I can watch my programs in comfort. It all costs money."

"But it also takes a large amount of time and energy and attention. The time I devote to my television, my accessories means less time for communicating with family. So what's the true cost of a free television?"

Jim Elliot's Profound Insight

One of the guys I love to read about is a guy by the name of Jim Elliot. Unfortunately, not many people remember Jim Elliot anymore. Jim Elliot was one of the young men who graduated from Wheaton. He was like everybody's all-American guy. He and five of His friends went down to South America on their first journey to reach a tribe with the gospel. They were killed.

He had married a gal by the name of Elizabeth Elliot, and many of you probably more likely have even heard of her. Well, Jim had a diary. Elizabeth Elliot had subsequently taken it, added some comments to the diary, and published it under the title "Shadow of the Almighty."

When Jim Elliot was 21, you talk about profound, listen to this. On January 4th, he writes in his diary: "I've been musing lately on the extremely dangerous accumulative effect of earthly 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. And 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 machines. A house with these things must soon become a home and children the intended outcome."

Now, listen to this phrase. It's counterintuitive, but it's absolutely true: The needs multiply as they're met.

When Needs Multiply

My daughter Haley is afraid of bugs - crickets scare her. Now that she's a mom, it's amazing because she overcame that. I'm one day in the family room, and I hear Haley say, "Dad, dad, dad, come here!" And I go, and outside the front door, right there on the sidewalk is a big spider. And I said, "Haley, just step on it." She said, "No, no, no, no, no."

Here's what I did. I stepped on it, kind of caught it on the side, and it seemed like hundreds of little spiders ran out of this thing. I thought of this phrase: The needs multiply as they're met. You buy this, it needs that. It demands attention. And I want to be rich in the kingdom of God and His agenda and His banking economic system than the world's.

Created for Good Works

A couple more scriptures. Ephesians chapter two, verses eight, nine, and ten: "For by grace, you've been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It's a gift of God, not a result of works so that no one can boast. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works."

In Philippians chapter two, verses 12, 13, 14, Paul tells us to work out our salvation in fear and trembling. Here's what he's not saying. He's not saying work for your salvation, but he's saying as a result of your salvation, your life is transformed. That everywhere you go, you become a display case for the work of God.

I think we mentioned last night, John nine. When the disciples say to Jesus, as they see the blind man, "Who sinned that he's blind? This man or his parents?" And Jesus said, "Neither, that he might become a display case for the work of God." That's what you are. That's why it's so important that your marriage is together, that your family's together, that your life is together - not in some phony way, but you're going to the world and you're saying, "You know what? I know Christ, it matters. It makes a difference."

difference. He's changed me. He hasn't made me perfect. You're like the blind man. I don't know everything. I just know this. That's what I was. I was blind. Now I can see.

The night before He dies, Jesus prays this to the Father: "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do." What's He given you to do?

Living a Consequential Life

There's a guy by the name of Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. Peggy Noonan wrote a wonderful book called "What I Saw at the Revolution." She has in there a section of what speechwriters would do today with the Gettysburg Address. One of the men she admired in her life was a guy by the name of William F. Buckley. Here's how she described William F. Buckley: "He lived a consequential life."

That's what they want to say about you. It's not that you founded the National Review or you were president of the United States. I'd spent a couple of days with you. There's nobody extraordinary in this room. They're not going to build monuments to you. But it's that your life made a difference. The people who came in contact with you were touched. They knew that you cared about them as people. You weren't in a hurry. You had time. You had time for kids. Time for the people around you. You live in a way that's consequential.

It matters how you do work. I'm following a truck the other day. It's a plumbing truck. And this guy's got a fish on it. So I assume if I talk to Him and I said, "What do you do?" He would say, "I'm a Christian plumber."

Here's another one of those moments. So it's a summer camp moment. Junior high, high school kids look up here now. Got to get this, very important. What's happened in that sentence is that this man has used Christian as an adjective instead of a noun.

There's no Christian way to fix a toilet. I've looked. There's nothing in here. I'm a Christian who happens to be a plumber. I'm a Christian who fixes tires. I'm a Christian that's a mom.

The Calling of Motherhood

Maybe you're a lot in life right now and I'm a sucker for those stay-at-home moms. You got, I think, the toughest job on the planet because you get zero strokes. Haley's got these two girls now. One's two and a half and the other's one in a few months. And all she does all day is serve them.

Haley sent this text today talking about Lucy. Lucy just came in from outside and said, "While I was pooping, I was praising the Lord." By the way, so was I last week, just so you know. "While I was pooping, I was praising the Lord." You've never had, moms, you've changed a billion diapers. You never had this happen. You never had this, you change that diaper and that kid pops up and goes, "What a job, mom. Look at that, nothing's going to get out of there. This is airtight, mom."

When you got Lucy and Harmony, here's what happens. Haley's over there changing Lucy and now she's over here and she's over there with Harmony and as she's changing Harmony, she's hearing from the other side of the room, all over again, it doesn't end. But God has you there for a reason. I watch my girls and I see God's grace and mercy in the work their mom put into them. God's placed you, we talk about the sovereignty of God, where He's placed you.

Get Into Recruiting

Here's the last thing. Get into recruiting and by that we mean sharing your faith.

John chapter one, there's this scene: "The next day where John was there again and He's there with two disciples and Jesus passes by and He says, 'Look, the Lamb of God.' And when the two disciples heard this, they followed Jesus and turning around, Jesus saw them following and say, 'What do you want?' And they said, 'Rabbi,' which means teacher, 'where are you staying?' He said, 'Come and you will see.' And so they went and they saw where He was staying, spent the day with Him, it was about the 10th hour and Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and followed Jesus and the first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and say, 'We found the Messiah,' that is the Christ and he brought Him to Jesus and Jesus looked at Him and said, 'You are Simon, son of John, you'll be called Cephas,' which is translated means Peter."

Now I've read that and taught it a billion times and I missed a phrase in there. They followed Jesus and the first thing they did.

If you go and see a movie like "42," how many of you saw "42"? Good movie. So the next day when you're having a conversation with somebody, the most natural thing in the world is to say, "Hey, I saw '42,' you ought to see it." I saw "Lincoln." Now I'm the only guy in the world that didn't like it. I was an hour into it and wishing John Wilkes Booth would come over the chair behind me and put a bullet in my head. It was the most boring movie I've ever seen in my life. End it, please get this movie over with. It drug on and on and on.

But if I liked the movie, you go and you say, "I like it." If you go someplace in town, you try a new restaurant, you tell your friends.

Natural Sharing

As I said, I've had these health problems. I've got people that give me a gallon of something. It's like $100 a gallon and "this will get rid of joint pain." When Susan had her cancer, people would send us blenders. They would always say this. I always thought this was the stupidest question. They would always say, "Do you have a good doctor?" I'd say, "No, we got a guy that works out of his van from Mexico. Are you nuts? That's some quack. I don't even know if he has a license or not, but he takes our insurance, so we're happy with Him."

We had these people. We had these people that we barely know that are saying, "Try this juicer, try this thing." And even if I get better, I'm still going to die.

I was talking to somebody the other day and they were talking about their grandfather. They said, "He beat death." I said, "I don't want to nitpick this, but..."

He postponed death. He didn't beat it. He's going, but isn't that amazing? You want to talk to somebody about a movie, you tell them about a movie, a restaurant, you tell them. But all of a sudden you go, yeah, a little pain in your hand, try this. And you do it unashamedly, but now you have the one guaranteed remedy for their sin problem and that's Jesus.

For some reason, we'll talk about a juicer or a movie, but we won't talk about Jesus. God left you here to make Him the invisible God visible and to speak the truth boldly. There's that saying, share the gospel and if you must, use words. Well, there's no other way to share it, but with words. No one was ever won to Christ by a wordless sermon alone.

Somewhere there, you're going to create this thirst in them and they're going to say, what's different about you? What's the answer? And you're going to have to go, Jesus. You have to say it. That's the truth.

Knowing vs. Doing

So we started with this, we've got to go. We started with this and we end with it. There's nothing, there's five things there. You know those five things. Why don't we do them?

I had a great opportunity. I was invited into a women's group. I have always thought that if I were running a women's group or doing a women's retreat, I'd be a great speaker to a women's group. So this lady heard me say that and she invited me in. I prepared this stuff. And the closer it got, the more frustrated I got.

Finally I said, ladies, I have my notes here. The topic is what a woman needs from her husband. And I said, let's open it up. And they started firing these answers. I was stunned. And they kept going and going and going.

Finally I said, okay, apparently you already know this. Maybe we should ask the question, why aren't you doing it? You know these things. And you have the power to do them through the Holy Spirit.

A Moment of Decision

So let's close and ask God. Ask God that maybe for some of you, this will be one of those kind of line in the sand times when you'll look back five, 10, 15 years from now and say, it was that three, four days at Cannon Beach that God invaded my heart in a special way, a different way.

Let's pray as Mila and the guys come to lead us. Father, thank you for these truths. We know them. We know that you want us to steward our assets, our life, our time, energy, effort, and our money, that we need to be in fellowship. We need to be about your business and that you left us here to speak the truth to a lost and dying world.

God, help us do what we know we need to do. And that's the power of your Holy Spirit in our life. Father, thank you for saving us, for making our life truly consequential. I pray that you would encourage each person here tonight to draw closer to you, to be thankful for what you've done in their life, and then to live lives that would bring honor and glory to you. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.