Ah-ha Moments - The Missing Ingredient
Tom Shrader explores the biblical concept of contentment as the often-overlooked component necessary for spiritual maturity. Drawing from 1 Timothy 6:6-8 and Philippians 4:11-13, he demonstrates how Paul learned the secret of contentment - being satisfied with God's provision rather than constantly pursuing more possessions, achievements, or circumstances. Shrader challenges the Western tendency toward discontent and shows how true fulfillment comes only through an intimate relationship with Christ, not through accumulating things or changing external circumstances.
“The missing ingredient in this life is contentment.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Ah-ha Moments (2016)
Recorded: 2016 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 41 min
Themes: contentment, satisfaction, materialism, fulfillment, provision, gratitude, simplicity, peace, struggling with materialism, feeling discontent, seeking fulfillment, new believer, western christian, consumer culture, middle class, spiritual seeker
Scripture: 1 Timothy 6:6-8, Philippians 4:11-13, Hebrews 13:5, Ecclesiastes 5:10, 2 Timothy 2:4
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, godliness, divine providence, stewardship, biblical wisdom, christ sufficiency, spiritual growth
Full Transcript
What a great day. You can feel the excitement in the air when you walk out and you see those chairs. People have been out since early this morning carving out their territory. So feel free to go out there and kick those chairs over and say you're not here, you don't deserve the spot.
I've so overhyped this thing. When you get there you're going to be looking for Andy and Barney and Opie all in the parade. We had an idea last night and I wanted to get you ready for the parade. So this is the experience as this candy comes flying at you. Here's the problem I had. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about this. There's about half of you that are going to be sitting there as candy hits you in the face. This sounded a lot better last night than this morning.
If you've got somebody next to you that you think reflexes are iffy, you're their cover. So we start really here with Mark. Be careful. I don't know if I can get them all the way back. If you're way in the back, I can probably fire it over that. We don't have any time for a message but we got time for this stuff, which I love.
Oh there you go. Look at her. What a catch. Best catch of the day. Get your hands off each other and start. This isn't a place for that. Mrs. McNeil wouldn't like that. Actually she probably would. See this will get you ready. This will get you ready for the real thing. Get your kids ready. You feel the spirit already.
There's candy flying. There's our first lawsuit of family camp 2016. I only have a handful more. Where's Nana? I want to bring Nana some. Missed you. You went to a new spot on us. This poor guy's coming in right there. That could be the highlight of the day right there. So that worked out all right. In my mind it seemed like a great idea.
The Missing Ingredient
Here's what we're doing today. It's a progression I think. I titled it The Missing Ingredient. When I became a believer in 1980, the whole world opened up to me. I saw the scripture and it's the title I used the second night. The Bible is true.
On Wednesday Daryl del Juse comes in to speak. Prior to being president of Phoenix Seminary, he was a senior pastor at Scottsdale Bible Church. The gentleman who followed him is a guy by the name of Jerry Jamie Rasmussen. Jamie and I have become friends. Four or five years consecutively he and I co-taught their men's retreat.
Two or three years ago we're driving up and Jamie said, "So what's new?" It's one of those Christian, "What's God teaching you?" questions. So I said, "Here's what He's teaching me. The Bible is true." He said, "Well I don't need to write that down. I got that already." I said, "No I don't mean just the salvation stuff. I mean as life stuff."
Returning to Early Faith
One of the great things, and Jeff made a comment after the first night and several of you did, is going back to those early days. That moment of conversion. How everything was so exciting. I have a friend who describes himself when he became a believer as "ignorance on fire." He said people didn't know if he was swearing at Jesus or sharing the gospel. Every other word was Jesus.
What's ironic to me is the longer we walk with Him, it seems that should get deeper, but it's almost like that fire doesn't go out, but it doesn't rage. Then there are those certain passages of Scripture and those certain concepts that when they come into your head, you get them and you go, "Wow." This is a big one for me.
There's a couple of passages of Scripture on your outline. The first one is in Philippians 4: "I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I'm in. I know how to get along with humble means. I also know how to live in prosperity. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret." We love the secret.
Secrets We Chase
In my life, I always say there's four things that I'll never see again. I'll never see, this is not particularly spiritual by the way, another men's athletic team of major sports—baseball, basketball, football—in college like UCLA basketball. There'll never be another like the Wooden dynasty. I'll never see another horse like Secretariat. There'll never be another band like the Beatles, just like opening camp. They opened with you can't go wrong when you start with the Beatles. And there'll never be another fighter like Muhammad Ali.
I'm a big Ali guy. Growing up, you would see, very different than now, the Ali fights. Many of them, once he became champion, once he beat Sonny Liston twice, a lot of those next fights were on television. There were some big fights that you can remember with Joe Frazier and George Foreman. But he fought a lot of guys like Leonis Martinez, Carl Milton, Ken Norton. The first couple Ken Norton fights were all on TV. He'd fight a guy like Chuck Wepner.
These guys would always say, because you know they're going to get pounded, but they always say, "I found a secret. I've been studying the films. I found a secret." We're a sucker for a secret. "Don't change the way you eat. Don't change the way you exercise. Just take this secret and you'll lose 10 pounds in a month." The answer is cut off your leg about the hip or something. I don't know what it is. I gained 28 pounds on the last secret diet.
So Paul says, "I found the secret. I learned the secret." And he says in verse 13, Philippians 4:13—I believe this is what Steph had on his shoe—"I can do all things with Him who strengthens me." What he meant was until the finals.
Years ago, USC, when Rodney Peete was the quarterback, he wore a little towel that had Philippians 4:13 on it. "I can do all things with Him who strengthens me." That's not what this verse is about. It's not, "I can leap tall buildings in a single bound. I'm faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive." That's not it.
He said, "Here's what I learned." You see it in verse 11. It's the missing ingredient in the Christian life. I would say, and I hate it when somebody talks about the Western church—well, I'm in the Western world, so I'm going to live like that. I get it. But in the Western world, I think it's the missing ingredient: "I've learned to be content."
When Keeping Score Kills Contentment
I am a fairly competitive guy. And when you start to keep score, contentment goes away. Whatever that score is.
Some friends of mine took me out to Topgolf. Is Topgolf up here? Do you have Topgolf? Do you know what that is? It's golf, but it's bowling golf. It's three tiers. You're hitting balls into nets. It keeps score like bowling. 70% of the people there are not golfers.
You have a big circle 50 yards out with nine sections in it, and you hit it. It's an amazing thing. There's a tracer in your ball, and it hits and records your points. It's interesting. We're all out there having fun. The minute they turn that on, and we started keeping score, and I hadn't hit a ball in two years, they didn't care. They're on me like there's no tomorrow. And I didn't care, and I'm out to win.
It's almost inbred in us that every time I talk about this, you can see people come up and say, "Well, what you're saying is almost not even American." I don't know about that part. Here's what I do know. It's biblical.
The Biblical Formula for Great Gain
The first time I ever read 1 Timothy—and it's on your outline, chapter 6, verses 6 through 8—it rocked my world. Paul writes, "Godliness is actually a means of great gain when it's accompanied by contentment." There's that word again. "For we brought nothing into the world, we can't take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with those we should be content."
So, I'm not a math guy, but take 1 Timothy 6:6 and think of it in the context of an equation. Godliness plus contentment equals great gain. If I want what God defines as great gain, there has to be in my life godliness and this thing called contentment.
Now, I'm going to go right away and say in probably most of your lives, if you're in a church, a good church, almost every Sunday you'll get a message that has all or part of it on godliness. I define godliness as a consistent, genuine, authentic walk with God. We expect to hear about that in church. But when's the last time you heard a message on contentment?
And yet, if we think of an equation, and I'll even put a value to this if you want that. We'll call godliness at 9 and contentment at 1. I'm just doing that arbitrarily to say, all right, I get the godliness thing, but if I'm going to get to 10, the contentment is absolutely essential.
Living in a World That Fights Contentment
Define contentment this way—this is Webster—"happy enough with what one has or is without desiring something more." Synonym: satisfied. We live in a world that constantly pushes us toward a lack of contentment. Radio Shack used to have a tagline on an ad—this is great—"We have thousands of things you never knew you needed." We have all these things you didn't know, we got them, you need them. This contentment thing, it's the missing ingredient.
And so how do we begin to strive for this? And what the world does is crank up. The more money I make, the more money I spend. There was a survey done in a book called "The Overspent American," and the comment was, "I cannot afford to buy everything I need." 50% of people making $35,000 or less said that. 35 to 50, 43%. 50 to 75,000 a year, 42% said "I can't buy everything I need." 75,000 to 100,000, 39%—4 in 10 said "I can't buy everything I need." Over 100 grand, 1 in 4 said "I can't buy everything I need." This is that thing that just gets going and going and going.
The Ah-Ha Moment About Verse Seven
Now look at that passage, 1 Timothy 6, verses 6 through 8. "But actually, godliness is actually a means of great gain when it's accompanied by contentment. We brought nothing into the world, so we can't take anything out of it. If we have food and covering, with those we should be content."
I started, I became so involved in this verse, and I started teaching it. And one day I was teaching it at Forrest's home, and the setup is very similar to this. I'm standing here, the middle screen is down, and those three verses are up there. Because it always bugged me. Look at it and be honest. Like an editor, if you were editing 1 Timothy 6, verses 6 through 8, wouldn't it read better if verse 7 wasn't there?
"Godliness is actually a means of great gain if it's accompanied by contentment." Skip verse 7. Verse 8, "If we have food and covering, with those we should be content." Verse 7 breaks the flow. If I'm writing it, there's no verse 7.
Now here's the good news. I didn't write it, God did. So verse 7 must be there for a reason. And I'm standing there at Forrest's home one day, and I'm teaching this, and I'm going to blow over verse 7. I'm going to blow over verse 7, and as I'm blowing over it, I'm standing there at Forrest's home, and I have this incredible moment in front of a group of people like you, where I went, "Oh my gosh, I get it! The reason verse 7 is there is the key to contentment."
I came in with nothing, I'm leaving with nothing. So I don't have to spend a bunch of time trying...
I came in with nothing, I'm leaving with nothing. My quest is to try to grab all this stuff while I'm here, and I think in this stuff I'll find happiness.
The music guys are always writing about that. John Lennon, you know, love, just imagine. What does that mean? Jimmy Buffett, let's get drunk. Bob Dylan, I never know what Dylan's saying - I never was a Dylan guy. But they're all trying to tell you, here's where I find happiness, here's where I find stuff, and that's that illusion.
God Wants Us Content and Satisfied
Here's what God says: I want you to be content. And this ties right into what we were talking about last night. I want you to be content, and I want you to be satisfied in me. Sheryl Crow, it's not having what you want, it's wanting what you have.
We're by nature discontent, and it sends us off on all of these unproductive rabbit trails that distract us from the real thing, from Jesus. Discontent about stuff that I can't control.
The Endless Cycle of Wanting More
Whenever you see somebody, and they're getting ready to have a baby, and you say, oh, what do you want, a boy or a girl? I don't care. All I want are ten fingers and ten toes. And then they have the baby, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. They got what they wanted.
But now, these fingers need to be able to play. These toes need to be able to run. My daughters and I always have this discussion. If a lady has an ugly baby, does she know it? Well, it's kind of crass, but you want to go, wow, I'm happy for you, I think. But isn't that the way it is? I don't just want a kid. I don't want an average kid.
My girls, their athletics were cheer. And so I went to literally hundreds of games I didn't care about. I was the only guy that they're playing, and I'm going, take a timeout. They've been working on a new cheer, and we want to see it.
When Our Kids Don't Measure Up
So I'm one day at a game. Halftime score, basketball, 34 to 4. Final score, 64 to 4. I'm walking out, and my team was the 4 in this game. Not doing a lot of cheers.
We're walking out, and this kid is walking with his dad. His dad is talking about another player on the kid's team, and he said, that Billy's really something. You know what? That Billy's like a coach on the floor. That Billy can pass, that Billy can shoot, that Billy can rebound.
You know what the kid hears? I wish you were Billy. I'm big on kids, okay? You listen to your mom, and you listen to your dad. But that's one of those times when I'm wishing the kid could just speak up and say, Dad, you know why I can't quarterback like Billy, and pass like Billy, and shoot like Billy, and play defense like Billy? Because I've got your genes, not Billy Dad's genes. That's the problem here, okay?
Bill Dennis Miller one night said, Tiger Woods is the only man in the world who could make Michael Jordan wish he was someone else. And that's that constant wish. You know, I see guys like, two-thirds of these guys, and I wish I was as gifted as they are. I see somebody playing, I wish I was gifted.
My Chuck Swindoll Complex
Chuck Swindoll is that one for me. I think the way Swindoll speaks, and His voice, and the way He writes is absolutely incredible. When I pick up a Chuck Swindoll book, I always go to the front, because they'll have in about four-point font a list of all the books He's written. Dozens, and dozens, and dozens, and dozens of them.
Yet, I'll be in a bookstore where almost no one knows who He is. And I'll go, I want to be like Chuck Swindoll, because I think that's really something. But nobody knows. Nobody cares.
Here's what God says: I want you to be content with who you are. Now, that's not a license to be complacent. But I gave you a certain set of gifts. I'm never going to have a platform like Billy Graham, or Greg Laurie, or Chuck Swindoll. It doesn't matter. I'll have the platform that God gave me.
Accepting God's Design for Your Life
It doesn't do me any good to wish I was taller. I wish I was taller. I wish I was better looking. I wish I was healthier. It's that satisfaction that God made you.
I'm big on the sovereignty of God. But the sovereignty of God includes making you the way you are, placing you where you were. You weren't born in India. You weren't born in South America. You were born here, into that family, with that giftedness.
Ray Stedman's Pawn Shop Lesson
Ray Stedman, my hero Larry Wright loved Ray Stedman. Ray Stedman tells a story that relates perfectly to this idea of 1st Timothy 6-7. We brought nothing into the world. We can't take anything out of it.
Stedman was in Palo Alto flying to Boston to speak at a conference, and He got there, and His bags went to Florida. A little more formal in that day than now, He lands, and He's got what He's wearing, but He needs His suit. He's walking down the street and sees this window, and in it is this beautiful navy suit. He looks up, and it's a pawn shop.
So He goes in, and He says to the guy, hey, you know, I see that navy suit in the window. What size is it? And the guy said, it's a 40. And He said, I'm a 44. And He said, that's all right. I got a bunch of them. Come back here.
He gets in the back, and here's this whole rack of navy suits. And He said, how'd you end up with all these? And He said, well, there's a mortuary in town, and they always had suits, which always bewilders me. You don't care how you dress when you're alive, but now they're going to bury you, and you want to be in a suit. I don't understand it, but nonetheless, He said, they would often have these suits, because people would want these suits, and they'd bury them in these suits. So the mortuary went to the factory, and they got these suits.
Stedman said, any chance you got a 44? And He said, I do.
But I got the slacks. And he said, there's a lady around the corner. She's a friend of mine. She'll tailor those things for you right now. Go on over there. Take it over there. He gets it.
So he does. He gets up the next morning, and he's getting ready to go, and puts on the suit. And he goes over to the dresser, and he's, oh, he would have deserved that for walking out on me. Probably subconsciously, I did it on purpose. And so, Stedman's starting to pick up his stuff, and he picks up his money, and he picks up all of his things, and he goes to put them in his pocket. And what? There are no pockets. A dead man doesn't need pockets.
It's verse 7. You came into this world with nothing. You're leaving with nothing. And when I get that, the accumulation of stuff, I'm not saying it doesn't matter. I'm just saying it starts to fit in to perspective on its own. And our quest, our time, our energy, our effort. And this is probably not an energizing trait for a leader, but I spend a lot of time in our staff meetings telling guys, most of what we're doing doesn't matter.
We've spent so much time on our website and IT stuff, and the minute we launch a website, we're redoing it. We talk about stuff that goes on and on and on. It doesn't matter. No one cares what color these chairs are. No one cares about that. We care about people.
The Love of Money and the Endless Cycle
But what happens to us, you see it? Hebrews 13:5, make sure that your character is free from the love of money. Be content with what you have. See, it's this thing that expands.
Here's how Solomon writes about it. It's not in your notes, but you should make a note of it. It's Ecclesiastes 5:10. "Whoever loves money never has money enough. The more you have, the more you want. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. The more you spend will be based on the more you make. As goods increase, so do those who consume them. What benefits are they to the owner?" Verse 11, "except to feast your eyes on them."
There's a great story. William Randolph Hearst, so Hearst Castle, Hearst Empire. He got into art, and he became obsessed with this one piece of art. He had a curator at the art museum at the castle, and he said, I want you to find this piece and buy it for me. So the guy came back, and he said, I can't find it. I don't know where it is. And Hearst said, well, you do whatever you got to do to find this piece, because I want it.
And so he hires these detectives, and they go all over the world. They trace this piece down, and then they discover that about four or five years before, it just disappeared. So they come back to Hearst, and as Hearst said, find it. I want it. They came in a few weeks later, and they said, we found it. We got it. It's in a crate in the basement of the castle. You already own it. What good are these except to feast your eyes on?
The Truth About Our Earthly Possessions
And then Solomon is what is ultimately quoted there in 1st Timothy 6. "Naked, a man comes from his mother's womb, and as he comes, he just shall depart. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry." It's important to grab that perspective.
Jim Elliott, and you may know that name, probably more likely know his wife, Elizabeth Elliott. Jim was one of these guys that would be this all-American kid. He was an athlete. He was at Wheaton. He and his buddies graduate, and they go to South America, and they make their first trip in to reach this never-before-reached native group, and he's killed in the midst of this. He leaves behind a diary, and it becomes a wonderful book. I think it's called, if I remember, it's called Through Gates of Splendor, and it's Elizabeth Elliott taking his diary with some comments.
As a 22-year-old, Jim Elliott writes this, "I've been musing lately on the extremely dangerous cumulative effect of earthly things. One may have good reason, for example, to want a wife, and 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 won't stay on the term that Peter proposed."
The Multiplication of Needs
So listen to this sequence, though a little dated. "So a wife requires a house. A house in turn requires curtains, rugs, washing machine, etc. A house with these things must soon become a home, and children the intended outcome." Listen to this line, counterintuitive. "The needs multiply as they're met."
See, my sense is, I meet a need that satisfies that need, and we're done. He said, no, the needs multiply as they're met. "A car demands a garage, a garage land, land a garden, tools, tools need to be sharpened. Whoa, whoa, whoa to the man who would live a disentangled life in my century." Second Timothy 2:4 is almost impossible. Second Timothy 2:4, "no soldier in active duty entangles themselves in the affairs of everyday life."
My daughter Haley is petrified of bugs. Cricket, doesn't matter. One day she's at home, ah, and I go, and right outside the front door of our house, I don't know how old Haley was, is this spider. And she said, it's a spider, dad. I said, I got it, and I go like this, and I step on it, and this thing is pregnant with like 55,000 spiders. I go like this, and these spiders just bolt out of there. You'll never forget, needs multiply as they're met. You have a need, and it requires another need, and another need, and another need.
Three Categories of Longings
Now I put, I want to check time, because I want to, we got to be on time for this. I'm going to take six minutes. You'll see in the bottom here the idea of longings, casual, critical, crucial. For me, this was a huge point. You and I have longings that one author has broken into these three categories.
Casual longing, you know, when I woke up this morning, I was a little groggy, and I had some coffee, and I had a little bar, and I was still a little hungry, so I came over and had some sausage and one pancake, and then somebody I don't even know brought me a cinnamon roll. Well, maybe it was me who got the cinnamon roll, but it was incredible. Those cinnamon rolls are just
something wrong. They need to be cut up and made into French toast, but I'm not a chef. But I had a casual longing, and it was met.
Now, it'll be back about 1:30, and then you have critical longings, and they're not met with a cinnamon roll. They're met typically in a relationship. We need people. We're not designed to live alone, and then you have this crucial longing that can only be met through Jesus.
Here's how we get in trouble. We try to meet that crucial longing with a person, place, or thing. So you'll see people all around you who go from guy to guy to guy, or gal to gal to gal, or house to house to house, or job to job to job, because they have that crucial longing that can only be met through Jesus, and they're trying to meet it with a new job at Microsoft, or a scholarship to UCLA, or I got this wife, but the 2016 models are out, and hubba hubba hubba, and what you need to know is they're really expensive.
The Pattern of Failed Relationships
Here's the fact. These are statistical facts from the Census Bureau. Second marriages fail at a higher rate than first marriages. Third marriages higher than second. Fourth marriages higher than third. Fifth marriages higher than fourth, because the problem is you.
I had a guy that came to me one time, and He said, "Tom, I'm going to get married," and I said, "You haven't been divorced very long, and you've been divorced three times?" "No, five." He said, "What do you think?" I said, "Well, you tried a tall one, and a thin one, and a short one, and a rich one, and a poor one. Here's what I see. I see a pattern here, and the only thing consistent in it is you." See, that's where I get into trouble.
That's where I get in this thing called debt. Why would I spend a dollar ten for every dollar I make? It doesn't make sense. I have to pay it back, but I'm into the illusion that if I have that thing, I'll be happy.
Defining What We Need
Here's what you need, and I hate it when somebody starts that sentence like that, and I only have three minutes. Here's what's really important: to define and put definition around what you need in your life, because you can have it and never know you have it.
In the old days, I used to go to Las Vegas a lot, and every time I would hear somebody say, "When I lose a thousand dollars, or five hundred," fill in whatever you're comfortable with. Let's say a thousand. "When I lose a thousand dollars, I'll stop." I remember one time seeing a guy, and we're at the Flamingo, if I remember, and he's playing dice, and he's got stacks of chips in front of him, and I said to him, "Wow, are you up?" He said, "I'm up about five grand." I said, "Wow."
I saw him at the end of the day, and he's standing there like this. I said, "How'd you do?" And he said, "I lost everything." Why? Well, he had a goal. What was his goal? Lose a thousand dollars.
Here's why I love this illustration. I said to him, "If I had said on the plane, if you win five thousand, would you be happy?" He would have said, "I've never won. I'd love to win five thousand." You see what he had? He had what he said would make him happy, but he never defined it. So you have to talk about how much is enough. How much is enough? What about kids? What are my expectations?
The Uncertainty of Riches
Don't become conceited. That's the balance there of 1 Timothy 6. When you get down to verse 17, don't become conceited or put your trust in the uncertainty of riches. Here's what the uncertainty of riches is. Number one, like a greased pig, you squeeze it and they're gone. It can be here and you can lose it.
I think the other thing about uncertainty is, you think they're going to make you happy, and they aren't. What ultimately is going to satisfy you is an intimate, vibrant relationship with God, and you content with that.
Now, let me be really clear, because I know it can be easily misunderstood. This is not a call to be average. I'm not into average. This doesn't mean you don't practice, or you don't play, or you don't try to win. I can play hard, but I'm not under the illusion that if I win that game, or close that deal, or make this, that I'm now going to be happy. It's not a pill once and for all.
The Missing Ingredient
The missing ingredient in this life is contentment. "I learned the secret of being content." Godliness is actually a means of great gain in God's economy when it's accompanied by contentment. Doesn't that match up perfect with "The Lord is my shepherd? I shall not want," and "I have rest," and all those things we talked about?
I'm not naive. I know in life that I'm going to have hard times and difficulty, and we're going to pick up right there tonight, 10:42.
Father, thank You for this day and this place. God, put a sense of peace and contentment in our heart, a peace that passes all understanding. God, don't let us be pursuing things under the illusion that they will make us ultimately happy. They may bring us joy for a season, but the only thing that's going to bring us real joy and real peace is a personal relationship with You. Let us enjoy this day and glorify You. We pray in Christ's name, amen.