Ah-ha Moments - The Ultimate Ah-ha
Tom Shrader shares his personal testimony of coming to faith and teaches on the ultimate 'aha moment' - understanding salvation by grace through faith alone. Drawing from Ephesians 2:8-9 and Romans, he emphasizes that salvation is not based on human effort or religion, but on God's grace alone. He contrasts biblical Christianity with all forms of religion, explaining that God saves us in spite of who we are, not because of our goodness.
“God saves you in spite of you, not because of you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Ah-ha Moments (2016)
Recorded: 2016 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 38 min
Themes: salvation, grace, faith, testimony, religion, works, breakthrough, revelation, new believer, questioning faith, religious background, seeking truth, feeling inadequate, struggling with works, young adult, spiritual seeker
Scripture: Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 3:23, Romans 3:10, Romans 5:1, Romans 5:6, Romans 5:8, Romans 5:10, Ephesians 2:3-4, John
Theological Themes: soteriology, salvation by grace, sola gratia, grace alone, justification, made righteous, faith alone, gospel message
Full Transcript
It is great to see you, great to be with you. Sandy and I are excited to be here for the obvious reasons. If you're from Arizona, we had a great spring with perfect weather, and when it hit June, it just went nuts. I haven't heard, but it had to be the hottest June on record. We had eight of ten days where we set a record. It wasn't like the record was 112 and it was 113. It's like the record was 110 and it was 117.
To get out of that, if you're from Arizona, you'll appreciate this. I got through it by finding a tree every time I went out driving, so I had shade. That sounds so silly, but it made it really tolerable. So to come up here is absolutely exciting, and to see those hands—I can't compare with 1948, but my first time here was 2000. I was telling Jeff, he was asking about that, and tonight is my 96th time I've taught here at Cannon Beach, and that's just terrific.
If you're still clapping Tuesday, it'll be far more impressive. That right there was weak and didn't mean much, but I appreciate the effort. How many have been here on the 4th of July before? A ton of hands. Right out here on Monday morning is the parade, and it is so fun. There's a lady that comes with a wiener dog about this long, and she gets a French roll and slices it and wraps it around the dog, and that's her float. It's my favorite float.
She's here most years, and I'm really well behaved, except when Bruce's candy truck goes by and they start throwing that candy. Two years ago, I think I broke a five-year-old's arm. There's that caramel candy with the white in the middle that's my favorite. The poor kid had it, and I just got it. It sounds bad when you say it out loud. But the big reason that I love to come here is God works in this place.
God Works in This Place
Every time, in different ways, you never know how it's going to happen or what it's going to be, and to say it's least expected is kind of trite, but God works. So what I like to do when we start every time is to sit quietly and ask you to contemplate why you're here and what you'd love to see God do in this half week that we're here. Just be honest with Him. He already knows where you are and what you're thinking, and don't be afraid to ask Him to do something special in your life.
Jeff mentioned it. Maybe when you come to a place like this, everybody looks pretty good, and everybody looks like they kind of got it together and you've been here before, and sometimes that can be misleading. Sometimes you can be barely hanging on. God does great things in that, especially when you're just honest about it. So we'll sit and it'll be 60 seconds and it'll feel like 60 years, but just pour your heart out to Him—what you want, what you need. Thank Him. Praise Him. So let's sit quietly and go before Him.
Father, we come before You as gracious people, grateful for what You've done, but also asking You to not let us be complacent with that and know You want to do so much more. We pray that whatever happens this week, we may 10, 15, 20 years from now, look back and say it was that July 4th at Cannon Beach in 2016, where You did something special in our life, God.
So we pray as we prayed before we came out. We've practiced and rehearsed and prepared and studied and planned, but without Your spirit in our lives and in this room and the life of the people, this is a waste of time. So we're asking You to fill us, maybe tonight, even some for the very first time to come into a saving knowledge of who it is to know You. So we pray with great expectation, great humility and are so grateful for what You've done in our life. Father, we thank You and we pray in Christ's name. Amen.
A Personal Update
The minute I got quiet, it occurred to me that I said many of us look good. As I said that you were looking at my legs, which don't look so good. I know that they're a little skimpy. I graduated from physical therapy. I had surgery three and a half, four months ago, physical therapy rehab yesterday. I was valedictorian. I crushed three guys in a walker. There was a lady 92 years old who leg pressed her age. So I let her win that event, but I was a stud in this. So I am excited to be here.
Here's my biggest challenge. Every time you come is what to talk about, every time. As I look back, I've done books of the Bible. We did Daniel. Absolutely my favorite time here was we studied Jonah. To this day, I'll meet people here and they'll say there's a little bit of Jonah in all of us. We love that. We've done topical studies.
The Question That Changed Everything
I was earlier this year with a friend of mine. He's a really smart guy, educated guy. He fancies himself as the grand inquisitor. I had literally been out of the hospital a couple of days. He said to me, "Do you think your best days are behind you?" I said, "Yes." I've since been rethinking that.
But then he asked a question that was really good. He said, "When you were in those great moments, did you realize they were great moments?" I said, "You know, it's so weird because I just been thinking about this." I said, "No, I really didn't." That got me making some notes and to your advantage, I hope not disadvantaged, gave me a lot of time to think.
So I went back to him and I said, "I'm at Cannon Beach this summer. Sandy and I are going to be with Grand Canyon University—it's becoming a major university throughout the country, but clearly in the Phoenix area, 15,000 students. Sandy and I are going to be with 400 of their student leaders later this summer for three days." I said, "I'm thinking about teaching about my aha moments in life." He said, "Well, that sounds very good."
Is your purpose that people should have the same ah-ha moments you have or have their own ah-ha moments? And I said, yeah, I don't know. I just sounded like a good idea when I came up with it.
So I did that. When you came in on that little podium back there were notes for tonight, did you get them? Did everybody get them? Would maybe a couple of you just raise your hand if you need the notes and you'll have them. I did that rather than PowerPoint so you have the hard copy. It's also kind of evidence that I've given this some thought, so I at least owe you that much.
I titled this the ultimate ah-ha moment. I've got seven messages and this is the most important one. The others are really helpful and your life will be better because of them. But if we don't get this one right, the rest of them don't matter. The band groupies don't have theirs over here yet. Always one.
The Foundation That Changes Everything
When we go through this, you might look and say, "This is so obvious. What are we doing?" Well, here's what I've discovered. I've done hundreds of conferences - men's, women's, marriage. I did a lot of pro athletes, a lot of major league baseball, a lot of NFL. We do a lot of conferences. Sandy and I just did an FCA, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, coaches weekend. We had about 95 high school coaches and spouses.
I started with this, which seems so weird. You're coming to Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center. It's kind of the assumption, and I learned after doing this about 10 years, that it's a faulty assumption that everybody in the room is on the same page and knows Christ as Lord and Savior. I've discovered that's simply not the case. So I want to start there.
There's always the possibility. For most of you, you're going to say, "I already know this." If you really do, then you ought to love this more than anybody, because it's going to take you back to your roots. There's going to be that sweet moment.
So I put for me, in my life, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." When I got this one, this is the ultimate game changer.
Growing Up in Iowa
I'm an Iowa guy, born and raised Davenport, Iowa. I know Mark's from Iowa. There's always Iowa. Any other Iowans in the room? Where are you from? What city? Council Bluffs. You couldn't get further away from Davenport than Council Bluffs. He's really from Nebraska, is what he's trying to say.
I'm a big Iowa guy. I love Iowa. I think it's great, but not enough to live there. But I love the place. I go back every year. I go to Kinnick Stadium for a game every year. I absolutely love the place.
I saw the best T-shirt the other day. There was a guy who had on a T-shirt that said, "I went to the Iowa State Fair and all I got was type 2 diabetes." If you've ever been there, that's where you get it. It's perfect.
My Catholic Upbringing
I was born and raised Catholic - Catholic grade school, high school, college. My father was a banker. We were a really simple family, four boys. It was 10 years ago, literally right now, this hour, that they called to say my dad had fallen over dead.
I was educated by the most misnamed group of people on the planet, the Sisters of Mercy. Everybody thinks it's old age. It's not. It still bruises from them whacking me around.
I was raised in this. Whatever religion was, I was it. We weren't just at mass on Sunday. We were oftentimes there through the middle of the week. I was taught there was a God. I knew all the language. Big stumbling blocks for people like virgin birth and all that stuff - I don't know, we just believed it. We just believed it.
College and the Move to Arizona
As I grew up, especially when I went to college, I went to St. Ambrose College, now St. Ambrose University. Once I got out, they excelled in academics. I wasn't made for college - Mark Twain said he never let school interfere with his education. I was my freshman class president, and this will give you an idea how it went: then I ran for re-election. That's not good. That's not the goal. I just wanted out of the place.
A friend of mine said - this sounds so weird, if my kids did this, I wouldn't let them do it - "I'm moving to Scottsdale." I did not know what state it was in, which sounds silly now, but Scottsdale was only about 10,000 people in 1975. I said, "Well, why?" He said, "The weather's perfect." Well, he meant in February, but I didn't know.
I saw him a week later, and I said, "I'm going with you. When are you going?" He said, "The day after Labor Day." So I moved down to Arizona, didn't know a soul other than the guy in the truck. I got there with the intention of playing golf and hanging out, partying, until I ran out of money, which was quick because I didn't have much of it. I had to get a job, and I was lost, totally confused.
The Moment That Should Have Been
I had one of those moments that should be the ah-ha moment. We were at work, and it was a Friday, and we were celebrating. We went out to lunch, and we drank our lunch, and we drank into the afternoon, and we drank that night. I remember it so well, because I had on this powder blue shirt and these yellow pants, and I looked so good, I thought.
I was driving home, and this police car came up behind me and asked me to come out. Interestingly enough, frankly, I had to do the same thing I just did in rehab.
I couldn't do it in rehab, and I couldn't do it that night with my head back. So they took me off to this city jail and put me in a cell about the size of this. I was early—we'd been drinking all day, so it was only 6:30—so I beat the Friday night crowd into the place.
I'm in there, and in come five or six guys who'd been in a fight in a bar, biker guys and me. Now there are things you can't learn in life unless you experience them. Here's one of them—you don't need to write this down, you'll remember this: Bikers have a thing for guys in yellow pants. You'll remember that. I learned that.
So I got out of that, and the next night I'm in the same situation again. Not in the jail, just driving. I can't see. I'm smart enough to pull over, and I quit. That starts me on a sojourn.
A Second Encounter with the Law
I end up in the commercial real estate business. I'm married. My wife is eight and a half months pregnant. It's a friend of mine's birthday, and the same thing happens to me all over again. A different lesson—the arresting officer was Elizabeth. Here's something again you don't need to write down, you'll remember: She doesn't want to be called Babs. She doesn't want that. But I'm learning.
So I go into the office the next day, and I said to a friend of mine—my best friend, I just had breakfast with him yesterday—I pulled him into a room and said, "Here's what happened last night." Here's what he said to me: "You need Jesus." I said, "Do you have anything else? Do you have anything else other than that?" He said, "I don't know." That was in December.
Meeting Larry Wright
In March, I went to a Bible study. The guy teaching was a guy by the name of Larry Wright. One of the ladies that I met here tonight said she knew Larry before I did. This was a guy I'd never seen anything like.
He walked into Phoenix Country Club, and here were these business guys, and this guy Larry got up. He's a very unimpressive figure. He was a small guy, about this tall. He had rheumatoid arthritis. He couldn't carry his Bible like you might, or I used to, like this. He'd carry it like this. He'd walk up to the podium—this is exactly how he did it, I watched him do it a thousand times. He'd put that Bible on his hip, and he'd get it up there. Then he'd open it, and everything changed.
He began to teach that morning, and he was teaching from the Book of Romans. I wasn't sure what it was, I just knew it was different than anything I'd ever heard. It's like we were the only two in the room. I went back to my office, and I was literally shaking.
The Phone Call
I opened up the phone book, and there were some Larry Wrights, and Lawrence Wrights, and L.T. Wrights. I called that number, and here's what I heard: "Hello." I said, "My name is Tom Schrader, I was at Phoenix Country Club this morning, there was a guy by the name of Larry Wright teaching, any chance you know who he is?" He said, "It's me." I said, "Wow, this is a Thursday."
I said, "I would really like to meet with you, because I'm totally confused, I have no clue. I've been trying to be good, but I gave up on that. I figured getting into heaven—somehow, I didn't know how—God had this grand computer, and if you had more good than bad, you went to heaven, more bad than good, you were going to hell. My bad stack was up there, I figured, let's just see how high we can get this." He said, "Well, let's meet."
The Meeting and Reading John
So we met on Tuesday morning, and I asked him all these questions, stuff that he'd never been asked before. "You believe in Adam and Eve?" I'm joking—it's what he'd heard forever. "Noah's Ark?" He said, "Tom, let me tell you, just read tonight the Gospel of John."
So I went home that night, and I had a Bible—never opened it, but I had it. I read the Gospel of John, and it might as well have been written in Greek. I had no clue what it said.
The Ah-Ha Moment
The next morning, I'm sitting in my car, and what I got was this verse, Ephesians 2:8-9. Larry had talked about you're saved by grace, not through your effort, not being religious. I remember praying, "God, here are those steps: I'm a sinner—that's the one thing we have enough empirical data to support, so I know that's true. Jesus died, I know that, and that's a historical fact, but what the Bible tells me is He died for my sin, and if I believe in Him, I have eternal life."
I'm sitting there, I'm waiting for a client, I'm sitting there, tears are pouring down, I'm rolling down the window looking for angels or bells or something. Nothing, nothing happened, but everything changed like that.
That was Wednesday, and the next morning I went into the study, and Larry was there. I said, "Larry, here's what happened yesterday," and here's what he—oh my gosh, he hugged me. I thought, "Oh my golly, they're huggers, I'm stuck with a bunch of huggers now, we'll be hugging forever."
Transformation Through Grace
What happened is a guy who never read a book—I got through college, the first book I ever read was a biography on Muhammad Ali, so I wasn't cracking the classics as I was working my way through—I became a reader, and I got into this word. I realized that salvation is not based on human effort or religion, but it's based on God's grace.
I'm involved at a church, and I met with our administrator the other day, and he was smiling. I said, "What are you smiling about? You're an administrator." He said, "I just had a lady in here, she's been at church three weeks in a row, and she came in, and she said, 'Tell me about grace, I'm so tired of trying to be good enough.'"
See that's religion. That's why I say this is the most important thing—if you don't get this right, the rest of this stuff doesn't matter. Religion—and religion is everything other than biblical Christianity, and I don't use the word Christianity anymore, because that's been so distorted—Christian has been...
Ah-ha Moments - The Ultimate Ah-ha
Part 4 of 5
abused, and misused, and defined as however you want to define it. I don't know how many hundreds of meetings I've had, one-offs with people, mostly guys, mostly kind of cool guys, because I attract cool guys, and I've asked a billion of them, are you a Christian? Here's my all-time favorite answer. The guy said to me, "not in the biblical sense."
What's left? Biblical Christianity. Here's biblical Christianity: salvation by grace through faith. Everything else is the same. Everything else is a sinful man trying to appease a holy God. Biblical Christianity is a holy God reaching down to a sinful man. We're absolutely unique.
And that's why when you see all these polls, and people say 50, 60, 70 percent say they're Christian, they mean anything. A Christian is not based on what we do, but what we believe. Now what we do is distinctive and different as a result of that salvation. But God hates religion.
The Reality of Universal Sin
So these are important verses. Romans 3:23, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." That's everybody. You know, I love to watch these kids' programs, and I love to watch the kids, and they look so cute. Sandy was showing me a picture today of somebody sent her, and it's a kid turning one. And this girl's sitting there, and she's got it all, and it said, "hello world, I'm one."
It's really cute, until you've got to live with her. I can tell you what her first words are going to be. It's one of two words: "mine" or "no." Those are her first two words. Those little kids are over there right now, and the biggest problem they've got are those kids dealing with her. You want to see sin, it's right there.
All have sinned. It doesn't say most, many, almost all. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:10, to just drive this home, "there is none righteous, not one. There's none who understands. There's none who seek for God. All have turned aside, together they've become useless in their attempt to reach God. There's none who does good, not even one." No one.
The Exception That Doesn't Exist
Every time we do this, I get, "but you don't know Nana." Well, hey, let me tell you something about Nana. When Nana was in high school, they used to call them rounders in those days. Nana, in high school, sold her own wild oats. I hear them all, "how about Nana? How about the guy next door? The guy next door comes and cuts my grass. I don't even ask him."
Well, here's the perfect example. Thanksgiving morning, your local news will be downtown at the rescue mission, interviewing families that are feeding people. You watch, make a note of it this year at Thanksgiving. "Hey, hello, and give us your name, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and there's your lovely little sinful kids too. And we're so glad you're here. Now, tell me why you're here." "Well, we're here feeding people." "Oh, good. And why do you do this?"
It's the same answer every time. "It makes me feel good about myself." So it's not because they're hungry, not because they're needy. See, there's none righteous. God looks not at the action, but at the heart of the actor.
The Heart Behind the Action
I can be doing the same thing, and God says, "yeah, this is the right heart." I got saved March 6th, 1980. There's a friend of mine, his name is Tommy Woods. Tommy got saved right about the same time with a very similar background. The difference was, I was kind of a mess, and Tommy was like a model citizen.
So there was a place in town called Chubb's, and they had the best cheeseburger in town. So to celebrate our one-year anniversary, Tommy and I go to Chubb's to have a cheeseburger. And we're talking, I said, "Tommy, it's been an amazing year." He said, "it has." I said, "you know what's interesting is, my life has changed so much. Not drinking anymore, all sorts of stuff." I said, "your life hasn't changed at all. You were always the best dad in the world, and the best son in the world, the best husband in the world."
And he said, "Tom, I'm doing the same thing, but I'm doing it with a different motive. I was the best dad in the world, so you would think I was the best dad in the world. I was the best husband in the world, so you'd think I was the best husband in the world."
God's Love Despite Our Condition
Romans chapter 5, I love this, it's the bottom of your outline, it's verse 6, 8, and 10. And Paul just drives this home. "For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly." Verse 8, "while He demonstrated His love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Verse 10, "while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His son."
So if you mark, I like to mark and cut, slice, and yellow, but look at the words. Here's how He describes us naturally: helpless, sinners, enemies. That's who you are. That's who I am by nature. Now here you go, this is a big deal. And God saves you in spite of you, not because of you. That's tweetable.
God saves you in spite of you, not because of you. Religion is all about that idea, "I'm going to earn God's love. I'm going to do something that's going to make Him love me." And that's not what the scripture says. The scripture says you were helpless, you were a sinner, you were an enemy, you were running from God, not to God.
Creating God in Our Image
The French philosopher Voltaire said it this way, "God made man in His own image, and man has been returning the favor every since." That's the God you were running to, the one you created. Haven't you had that experience? Go to Pig and Pancake with a friend—remember you are what you eat, I order pigs in a blanket. But go to Pig and Pancake with a friend, and you're with this friend, and you start talking, and they say something like this. This is a big tip off, this is an ah-ha moment. They say, "my God would never do that." What did they just tell
The God We Create vs. The God Who Is
The God that most people worship is their God, made in their image. But the God of the Bible says we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Yet we can have, Romans 5:1, peace with God.
See that's my problem. My problem is, I was trying to find peace in a person, place, thing. You can operate under that and say I'll be whole, I'll be happy, I'll be at peace, when? And then you fill in the blank. If it's anything other than Jesus, you're setting yourself up for certain disappointment.
God demonstrated His love toward you, in spite of you, not because of you.
The Ultimate Ah-ha Moment
Here's where we are tonight—it's the ultimate ah-ha moment. It's to make sure, at this point in time, at least you understand these terms. You may not buy them, but have you come to that point in your life where you understand that you're a sinner, and your sin has separated you from God, and there's nothing you can do to fix it?
But God—it's the beginning of verse 8 there in Romans 5, that great word, but God. Ephesians 2 is that way. Ephesians 2, Paul's rolling along in Ephesians 2, and Paul said, you are dead in your sins and trespasses which you formerly walked according to this world, according to the prince and power of the air, in the spirit that's now working in the world among the sons of disobedience. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 3, by nature we were children of wrath. That's who we are by our nature.
Ephesians 2:4, but God, being rich in mercy, because of His love with which He loved us.
God's Unconditional Love
This sounds, I don't know, almost so trite. God loves you. God loves you. Now, the problem with that is, we think He loves us on some conditional basis. God loves you, and the evidence is, Christ died for you, and if you come to Him in repentance and faith.
Here's what that means. That means, believe that Jesus is who He said He was, and you're who He says you are, and you believe that when Christ died, He died in your place. The agony of the cross—that term—that's not about the physical part of that. Thousands of people died a more physical, agonizing death than Jesus.
The agony of the cross is when Jesus is there, and He cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And at that moment, the punishment that's due to the people that will come to Him in faith, at that moment, that punishment is poured out on Jesus. That wrath of God is poured out on Christ. He took what you deserve, and there's nothing you can do to earn it. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.
The Personal Question
So we start with that. Have you come to Him in repentance and faith? Not asking if you're religious. I am constantly working on and revising my funeral. I got a to-be-announced date at the top of the page. It's not like I'm dying or anything, but I'm always working on it. Who do I want to talk? I just took somebody off and replaced them. So be nice to me.
But one of the songs that I picked was the second song we sang, Happy Day. I want to start my funeral with that. I think, happy day. He died. I'll be with Him.
So do you know Him? That's the question for tonight. Have you come to Him in repentance and faith?
Beyond Religion
Trust me, it doesn't mean being religious. Hardest group that I had to teach are religious people. They're the toughest one. After a night like tonight, I'll see them in the coach house, and they'll say, "That was interesting." Really? Flattering? Interesting? So you deal with that.
Ask God to expose your heart to you tonight.
Father, thank You for this truth. Pray for this weekend and for tomorrow and the next day. I pray for tonight. I pray that there are people who, right now, are reevaluating their lives, and You're opening their hearts to see that they've been deeply religious and maybe great Bible scholars, but they don't know Your son Jesus. Will You draw them close to You tonight and open their eyes?
And for those of us who would say, you know, we've heard that a thousand times and it's true, will You make it as sweet as it was that very first time we heard it? God, we love You, but only then because You first loved us. Thank You for Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.