Ah-ha Moments - How To Eliminate Stress In Your Life

Tom Shrader addresses the epidemic of stress in modern life by presenting five truths believers can know that reduce anxiety: God is in control, He forgives sin, He is our only hope, He works all things for good, and He never changes. Rather than focusing on what we can do to manage stress, Shrader emphasizes what we can know about God's character and sovereignty as the foundation for peace in life's inevitable trials.

“It's beyond your control, but it's not out of control.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Ah-ha Moments (2016)

Recorded: 2016 at Cannon Beach Conference Center

Duration: 43 min

Themes: stress, anxiety, peace, trust, sovereignty, control, forgiveness, hope, overwhelmed by stress, struggling with anxiety, feeling out of control, new believer, working professional, parent, dealing with uncertainty, facing trials

Scripture: Romans 8:28, James 1:2, 1 John 1:9, Psalm 139, 1 Corinthians 6:20, Romans 6:11, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17, Mark 8:36, Romans 8:35-39, Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, John 16:33, Colossians 1, Philippians 4:14

Theological Themes: providence, divine sovereignty, justification, forgiveness of sins, immutability, gods unchanging nature, redemption, sanctification

Full Transcript

Well good morning. Good to see you this morning. Glad that you are here. It's great to be with you.

I'm a little sad when I hear Jean talk about it's the end of the week. It's the end of the week almost for Sandy and me and that just went way too quickly. I had something really cool happen before we started. Jeremy said to me, which is kind of cool which means he was listening and doing the math, that last night was my 100th talk at Cannon Beach. Isn't that cool? I'm excited. I get a free sweatshirt and we need approval from the board on that. No, I'm teasing.

But it just reinforces what a great place this is and what an interesting week it's been because I mentioned to you the first night that I sat down, I don't know, a month or two ago and I'm old school. I said I want a legal pad and I started writing notes about those aha moments or those big lessons. I do it in kind of a disorganized organized way and so I got paper everywhere and then I pulled them together. I don't think I really realized until last night and this morning how sequentially these lessons build on one another. If you're here today and this is the first time you've been with us since we started on Saturday night, you're okay. It's a standalone but if you've been with us you really have been prepped for today's talk. It really does build.

The Stress Epidemic in Our World

Let me set the background a little bit. The director of Britain's National Association of Mental Health wrote this: "The whole Western world is under stress. Our mode of living produces continuous stress from the moment we're born. It hits everyone. There's no escaping it. Stress affects the apparently happy healthy people just as much as the natural born worrier." Says this expert, "I'm left in no doubt that stress is the fastest growing disease in the Western world."

The American Medical Association reported that 50% of all visits by patients to physicians involve stress. Therefore making stress quote "more common than the common cold." I love the quote, it's the nature of living. When you hear an announcement, how weird is this, this would not have happened five, six, even ten years ago. When you hear an announcement there's no cell phone, you can feel your throat tighten and your hands shake.

I was talking to Kelsey about it and she was saying "I'm addicted to it." It's not like I'm addicted to it if I don't have it. Like I didn't bring my phone over today. I try not to unless I need notes or something. When it's not there it's not like I miss it but when it's there I can't stay off it. Down home it's beeping with alerts and this time of year it beeps two or three times a day with a monsoon that's coming through and there's no relief. There's no getting away. There's no "hey I'll send you over the information." No, you can now email it to me or put it in a PDF. It's constant contact.

The Top Stress Producers

Here are the old traditional things and you can add to it. Survey of top producers of stress in life: Death of a spouse. Divorce. I love this. Divorce. Number three, marital reconciliation. So either one I guess. Separation. Jail term. Death of a close family member. Injury. Illness. Retirement. A mortgage more than $10,000. All sorts of different things.

What Doctors Say You Can Do

I've been to a lot of doctors and Sandy, though you'd never think to look at her, has a whole fleet of doctors too. Let me just encourage you ladies and I need to speak to the guys probably because you're part of helping with that. You really need to free the gals up to join the ladies today at 3:30 over in Pacific View because it'll be a great time and Sandy will have you do some squats. I don't think we'll be doing that but it'll be a great time. You'll enjoy it and more than enjoy it you'll benefit from it.

But Sandy goes to different doctors and the medical guys and the naturopaths and the chiropractors and all the guys. Here's three things they all say you can, here's the key word now, do to deal with stress. Three things you can do and they all agree.

Number one, and I used to say this differently, I used to say eat correctly but I gave up on that. Eat better. Correctly, that's a lot. How am I going to eat correctly? Although I got through that morning without one of those cinnamon rolls. But then I realized I don't need the roll, I just need a pint of the frosting. I can put that on my roast beef or whatever I want, oh my golly. But those potatoes this morning were right there too. So eat better. All the doctors will say that. Doesn't matter what their training is.

Number two, and this is a hot new topic. Arianna Huffington just wrote a book about this. Sleep. You need to sleep. There's this myth that somehow you're wired and you can go on three hours sleep or four hours sleep or any of that. That'll all catch up to you.

And then the third one is exercise. You don't have to be doing kettlebells and all those things. Those are all great but just simply walking. First song today was a 427 step song. So we were so excited about that. Just walking 8, 10,000 steps a day which is pretty easy to do. So you can go down and you can tweet that and you'll get all sorts of different things. But essentially those are three things you can do with stress.

What You Can Know About Stress

Here's my big deal. I want to give you five things, not that you can do, but five things that you can know that will allow you to deal with the stress in your life. So in your notes we've defined stress this way. Stress is essentially the wear and tear of living. Stress is life. It's that little bit of thing. It's not even the big deals.

There's a corner, it's about a mile from our house, it's a corner of McQueen and Elliott. The town of Gilbert, that's the city we live in, the town of Gilbert has decided to make that light one of the main stress points in my life. There's something that they've installed, and it's a little bit conspiratorial, on the front of my car that when I approach that light, something on the front of my car

automatically turns that light to red. I don't know how they do it, or why they do it, but that's life. When that arrow's green, I know this is stupid, when that arrow's green, my life just starts on a better note. My day just goes better.

Stress is this. Stress is the wear and tear of life. It's a red light, it's when the Wi-Fi goes out, it's when the call doesn't get returned. It's the big things, it's the little things, and it's inevitable.

I mentioned these two verses last night, so I want to build on them. James chapter 1 verse 2: "Consider it all joy my brethren, when you encounter trials of various kinds, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." Circle three words: when, various, knowing. Consider it all joy my brethren, when these inevitable trials, various colored, come into your life. Here's the key word: knowing. I know something—that the testing of my faith produces endurance.

Understanding God's Purpose in Trials

What the Bible tells me is when I pray and say "God, here's the deal," and as we get older this becomes one of our big prayers every day, "I just want to finish strong." Everybody around me is trying to finish strong, and I want to finish strong. I want to persevere, I want to break the tape. When you pray that, God hears "bring me trials," because that's what the scripture says. I know that what produces perseverance is the testing of my faith.

Remember what we said: that testing is to our faith what aerobics are to our physiology. I know that. My big deal is, what I know trumps what I feel. It's the promise in John 16:33: "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."

Five Things You Can Know for Certain

So all that builds on what we talked about last night. Five things you can know for certain that will allow you to reduce the stress in your life. Number one—it sounds like a bumper sticker, I know—God is in control.

We sit on a planet that weighs six septillion, five hundred and eighty-eight sextillion tons. I don't know how they figured that out. It's spinning on its axis at about a thousand miles an hour in an orbit where it's moving about a thousand miles a minute. It's part of a galaxy that if you traveled at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second, it would take you something like a hundred and twenty-five thousand years to cross it, and it's one of billions of galaxies. This universe is giant and getting bigger each and every day.

Paul tells us in Colossians 1 that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, and by Him all things were created. It's not just that God created and then walked away and said, "Well that's done." He created it and holds it together.

A Story About Bob Hage

Years ago—and it's one of the coolest things—I like people. Not all of them, I mean there's always a few, but generally true, I like people. There are certain guys that remind me of my dad, that Midwest kind of banker lawyer look. It's the gray hair that's combed a certain way with the glasses, and they're always just a smidgen taller, and you can tell there's just something about them. Still the khakis, still the pressed shirt.

I'm teaching one morning—I teach now three times a week, but for 25 years I've done at least three and up to six studies every week in the marketplace, targeted primarily at businessmen and women, but over the years we've all aged, and now it's all old people. This guy comes in, and he's got on this really cool plaid shirt, khaki slacks. He's the guy, and I'd never seen him before.

I come over and say, "Good morning," and he said, "Good morning. Do you know so-and-so?" I said, "I do," and he said, "Meeting him here today, I'm his guest." I said, "Great, we're glad you're here," and I had to go start.

The Mercury Capsule Engineer

So I'm done, and he comes up and introduces himself. His name was Bob Hage. Amazing guy. I said, "What's your deal?" Well, when John Kennedy said, "We're going to go to the moon and back safely by the end of the decade," they didn't have a rocket ship, they didn't have anything. They just had a dream. Hage worked for McDonnell Douglas, who was developing the capsule, the Mercury capsule, and Hage was the liaison between McDonnell Douglas, the Mercury capsule, and the seven original astronauts. How cool is that?

So John Glenn, and Alan Shepard, and Gus Grissom, and Wally Schirra, and Scott Carpenter, and a couple others. Hage is working, and he's obviously a brilliant guy, he's a scientist. In the middle of all of this study, and they're trying to figure out how to send this guy to the moon, and they're doing all these calculations, Hage is finding His soul greatly in turmoil. What's the meaning of life? All those fundamental questions. Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?

A Search for Answers

So Hage is on this sojourn all over the world to get these answers. He ends up with Francis Schaeffer in L'Abri, and so he studies like two or three weeks with Schaeffer—intensive—nothing. He comes home one day, and he's sitting in St. Louis in His office, His home office, and he's on the phone, and it's a conference call. They're trying to figure out—I don't know what you talk about, you know, we talk about Steph Curry and Jordan Spieth, they're talking about gravity. That's a heavy subject.

So he's talking about gravity, and they're trying to figure out gravity, and they can't figure out how this works. So Hage hangs up—this is him telling me this story—and

His cleaning lady was there, and she said to him, "I'm really sorry, I couldn't help but overhear, and I know you're talking about gravity. I can explain gravity to you." He said, "Really?" And she said, "Yes." He said, "Well what is it?" And she said, "Well, Jesus created this all, and He holds it together." There in his office that day, with his cleaning lady—not Francis Schaeffer, not some genius, at least by credentials anyway—his cleaning lady leads him to Christ in repentance and faith. God holds this all together. He started it.

Psalm 139—and I'm reading from The Message and editing it, but you get the gist of it—verse 1, the psalmist writes: "God, investigate my life, get all the facts firsthand. I'm an open book to you. Even from a distance, you know what I'm thinking. You know when I leave, when I get back. I'm never out of your sight. You know everything I'm going to say before I say the first sentence. I look behind me, you're there. I look up, you're ahead. This is too wonderful. I can't take it all in."

"You know me inside out. You know every bone in my body. You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth. All the stages of my life were spread out before you. The days of my life all prepared before I even lived one day."

Psalm 139, verse 23: "Investigate me, O God, find out everything about me, cross-examine, test me, get a clear picture of what I am, see for yourself whether I've done anything wrong, and then guide me on the road to eternal life."

Beyond Your Control, But Not Out of Control

In this world that feels like it's potentially careening out of control, it's important to make this distinction: It's beyond your control, but it's not out of control. I can't control it. I mentioned before Ali—I mean I really do think he was the greatest. Somebody came up and was talking about who they'd like to see him fight, but all I can see, I just taped a bunch of Ali stuff from the early days, and here's the greatest, here's the guy. Unbelievable hand speed and all that goes with it, and yet there's this microorganism that invades him, and the greatest can't fight off Parkinson's. Things are beyond your control, but not out of control. So I rest in that.

When I was a little boy, we had two TV channels, CBS and NBC. It was big when ABC came to town. CBS every night, Sunday night, seven o'clock, Ed Sullivan. And Ed Sullivan had this certain kind of lineup of acts that he liked, but he loved an old gospel singer by the name of Mahalia Jackson. She used to come on, and it's funny, as a little boy, I don't know why I remember this, as a little boy, I just remember this powerful lady singing, "He's got the whole world in His hands. You and me brother in His hands, the little bitty baby in His hands, He's got the whole world in His hands."

In this wear and tear of living, knowing He's in control begins to reduce that stress.

God Forgives Sin

Here's the second thing, this is huge: He forgives sin. First John 1:9, if we confess our sin, He's faithful and righteous to forgive us. Paul talks to the church at Corinth—it was a wild, wild city. He talks to the people who've come out of that city into the church, and he lists all these sins in First Corinthians 6, and he said, "Such were some of you." But just let these words go over you: You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. First Corinthians 6:20, you've been bought at a price.

I had a friend, and we used to work together—this would have been in the early 80s—and he was the Christian guy in our office. He was involved with one of the churches in town, he was involved in bringing Fuller Seminary to town, he was a leader. His daughter was at Phoenix Christian High School, and she came home one day and said to him, "Dad, I'm pregnant." This is 1980, much different environment than now, and so that started the whole discussion. He said, "Well what do we do?" And she said, "I really love this guy, we want to get married." Now she's a junior in high school.

So there's a long discussion, and they decide they're going to get married. The kids start with her: What color wedding dress? You understand the undercurrent of this conversation. What color wedding dress you're going to wear? The girl didn't know, she didn't understand. She came to her dad and said, "They're asking these questions. What color wedding dress am I going to wear?" He said, "Well what color do you think you should wear?" She said, "White." He said, "Isn't white the color of cleansing? Isn't that the color of forgiveness? Haven't you confessed this is sin?" She said yes. And here's what he said: "If you wear any other color dress but a white wedding dress, you're going to break your daddy's heart."

Freedom from Sin's Bondage

R.C. Sproul talks about a secular psychologist who tried to hire him, and he was going to pay him six figures to work a couple days a week, three hours a day. He said, "Here's what I want you to do. I want you to be able to give these people something that somehow releases them from the guilt of their sin"—that stress that sin brings in our life.

I made a list of three things: as followers of Christ, we're free from the eternal consequences of sin, and the slavery of sin. Paul writes this in Romans 6:11: "Consider yourself dead to sin, alive to God in Christ. Therefore don't let sin reign in your bodies." And then I add this, because you don't always fit it in there: free to be the person God made you to be.

God created you in a unique way. I was talking to some people before we started this morning, and we were talking about the kids, and you know, nobody's perfect, and I was talking about my grandsons. One is eight, and one is ten. The ten-year-old is perfect. I know he's my

A Perfect Grandchild and Freedom to Be Yourself

I love all eight of my grandchildren, but I don't see the other seven as perfect. This kid is just a unique kid. He's the gentlest kid. He's my favorite. And you know, you got to be careful how you say that. You can't say it when the other seven are sitting there, or their parents, but he's my favorite.

He's ten going on fifty. He's the gentlest. After this last surgery, I had bags and tubes and stuff hanging all over. The ten-year-old came in and said, "Oh Papa, how are you? Are you okay? Does it hurt?" The eight-year-old came in and said, "How's that all hook up? What's going on? Where's that go? Where's that one go? Oh, wow. I didn't want to see that."

I was telling him this morning, the ten-year-old loves to come over and watch TV with me, which is like the fastest way to my heart, with a pint of that frosting and TV. We're talking the other day and we're out of stuff to talk about. I keep saying he's ten. There's a pause, and he said, "Have you eaten at any good restaurants lately?" Really? Chuck E. Cheese. I mean, I don't know whatever those are.

These two kids are so different. Same mom, same dad. One has dark olive skin and brown hair. The other has really light skin and red hair. You're free to be who God made you to be. You're quirky, little, odd, different way. You're forgiven.

A Prayer About Forgiveness

I was one day in a meeting with a gentleman who's an old friend of mine. He's the first guy that Eric River gave me an opportunity to teach a Bible lesson. The first lesson I ever taught was in his Sunday school class. He closed our meeting with a prayer, and I sent him an email that day. I said, "Was that spontaneous, or written, or can you send me a copy of it?" Listen, I love this. This is the email he sent me:

"Tom, here's the prayer I shared this morning. Father, I find myself remembering what You've forgotten and condemning myself for what You've forgiven. Teach me never to forget Your forgiveness, because I will only be at peace with myself when I'm at peace with You."

You can feel the stress - maybe I'm imagining it - you can feel it go. He's forgiven. It's that repetitive theme. He knows you. He loves you in spite of you.

God Is Our Only Hope

Here's the third thing: God is our only hope. Life is temporary. Second Corinthians 4:16-18: "Though we don't lose heart, though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparisons. For we look not at the things that are seen that are temporary, but the things that are not seen that are eternal."

I don't know how many years ago now - I probably need to go back and look it up - but remember the BP oil spill in the Gulf? There was a picture, and if you turned on the news, this picture was a little cropped out picture that sat up 24-7 on the screen. It was that oil that had broken off and was constantly spewing out. I don't know if you remember that. I became obsessed with this stupid picture, and I said, "This is like a metaphor for how I see the world around me. I see all this stuff spewing out, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Marriage, Media, and Perspective

When Sandy and I got married, we are very much alike, I think, in our world view. We have kind of the same sense of humor. We can walk through town and see something and just look over at each other and go, "That's really weird." But we're very different in terms of our approach to life.

I have three things I love: television, sports, and politics. Sandy has three things she hates. I'll reverse the order so it doesn't - politics, sports, and television. She bought me, which I thought I would never use because I associate it with my great-grandfather, she bought me a pair of TV ears. You know those stupid ads you see that you put on that you can hear? So not only can I hear TV, I find myself wearing them when she's not home, but I can listen to TV without interrupting her.

But like that oil spill, a constant barrage of news all day long starts to wear you out. Fox News, Fox Business News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, all day, all day, all day, all day. By the end of that day, you are messed up. It's funny to talk and all the ladies are going like this. I think it's a real issue for people. I'm not speaking against that or against them. If I'm going to watch news, that's what I watch. But all of a sudden, I can be so absorbed in what's going on in the day that I forget that all of this is temporary.

It's on your list. Our only hope is Jesus. This election is going to drive me insane. It's not an election, it's an IQ test, and we're failing. I mean, it's just going to drive me nuts. But you know what, Sandy has to tell me two things. One, what does she say? Turn it off! I can't hear you. I got these rabbit ears on. I don't know what you're saying. Turn it off.

The Temporary and the Eternal

In a way, it doesn't matter. That's not to say don't be involved. I'm very involved politically. But what the scripture is saying is the outer man is decaying. The inner man is being renewed day by day.

Paul writes this in Philippians 4:14: "For we believe that Jesus died and rose again. Even so, God will bring with Him those that have fallen asleep." He's writing to the church at Thessalonica because they're confused about end times. They had heard that Jesus was coming again. They were confused about what about the Christians that are dying, what's going on in that. So Paul's writing to clarify.

He said, "For we say this to you by the word of the Lord, that we were alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those that are fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first." So there's all sorts of stuff. Tim LaHaye made a fortune on this. There's all sorts of stuff about how's this happening.

personally don't care. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and shall always be with the Lord. That's 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17.

My point is, as is often the case, we stop one verse too soon. Here's what the next verse says: "Therefore, comfort one another with these words." The Lord's coming again. Don't know when. I know this: I'm a day closer to it now than I was yesterday.

The Reality of Our Perspective

When I became a Christian, it was all new. I was like this kid at Disneyland for the first time. I'd hear these things, and one of them was "Christians are so heavenly minded, they're no earthly good." Did you ever hear that? Here's what my experience has been: the opposite. We're so earthly minded, we're no heavenly good. I'm so focused on today and the things around me today that I need that nudge from Sandy that says, "It doesn't matter, buddy. Let it go."

The outer man is decaying. I can't stop it. George Bernard Shaw said it this way: "The statistics on death are impressive. One out of one people die." I know this. I'm in a program right now called "Choose How You Age," and it sounds really goofy, but it's really pretty good. It's built on this premise: I'm going to die, but through exercise and diet and choices, I can maintain a certain level of strength—not like when I was 23, but a certain level of strength—until the end.

Our Hope Is Jesus

The hope that we have in the midst of this stress, the hope that we have, is Jesus. "What is a profit of man," Jesus asked in Mark 8:36, "if he gains the world, but forfeits his soul?" That doesn't mean I don't care. I care about the things in life. I want to win. I want to do the best I can—not to see how much I can get, but to glorify God in the process of this.

The wear and tear of life is things are great, and the things are coming around me, and it's day by day. All of a sudden I start to get weak. And He said, "No, no, no, no. It's momentary light affliction."

God Works All Things Together

Here's the fourth thing I mentioned last night: Romans 8:28. "And we know God causes all things to work together for those who love Him and those that are called according to His purpose." We said to you before, that's not everybody. That's those of us who know Christ in a personal way. There's that word again—in your Bible, it's the box, the yellow, the arrow: "And we know." In my Bible, my working Bible, I have the word "fact" written right before verse 28.

Paul writes this right after that: "What can separate us from the love of Christ?" There's the buzzword: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, naked, peril, sword. "And all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through"—and there it is—"Him who loved us." For I am convinced, Paul writes, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing—in my Bible, I wrote there, "Tom Schrader, even I can't undo this."

See what He said? Everything that's created—that's everything other than God—can separate us. It's the third time, in verse 35, 37, and 39, that Paul uses the phrase "the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus." We are with Him forever. It's the picture we had last night, of Him holding on to us—of Him holding on to us, not us holding on to Him.

God Uses Everything for Our Good

He causes—it's true—and God causes all things to work together. It doesn't say God causes all things. God doesn't cause sin, but God will use even our sin for our good and His glory. My suspicion would be, if I started over here with Gene, and I gave you a microphone, and I said, "Give me a time when you saw God work in a mighty way," I'll bet we would hear more about adversity than great stories.

Some of the greatest ministries, maybe some of the most powerful messages ever delivered from this platform, are based on failure and sin and hardship and lessons. The beauty about the Christian faith is that it's a story of redemption. That Bible is about creation, and here you go—I love to do it. It's a powerful visual.

Here's my Bible. This is just true. This is page one and two—this is about creation. This is page three—this is about the fall. The rest of it is about God fixing it. The rest of this is all about restoration, redemption—that powerful reunion. God causes all things to work together for good. What you know trumps what you feel.

God's Unchanging Character

Then number five—and this is the one that people blow off pretty fast, but it really, in a way, holds it all together—God doesn't change. Malachi 3:6: "For I am the Lord, I do not change." "Every good thing," James 1:17, "perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there's no variation or shifting shadow."

That God that we read about in that Bible is the same God we worship and serve today, that Spirit. I got to remind myself, I read about Paul. When I first became a Christian, Paul was the guy I identified with. I don't know why, I just thought he was a cool guy. I thought, "I want to be that guy. It's black, it's white, it's clear, it's hard. I want to be him."

Then one day I realized the same Holy Spirit that was empowering Paul is the same Holy Spirit that empowers you and me. God doesn't change.

Our Hope Is Anchored in God

So that—and we close—our hope, on your outline, in the midst of all of this stress and turmoil and difficulty and challenges of life, our hope is in the character of God, the sovereignty of God, the faithfulness of God, the promises of God.

Look at that outline, five things to know. Number one: God. Number two: God. Number three: God. Number four: God. Number five: God. Our hope—character: God. Sovereignty: God. Faithfulness: God. Promises: God. You get the picture pretty quickly.

Our hope is not in any person, place, or thing other than Jesus and the one true God of the Bible. So the most magnificent journey I can be...

On is to know Him. And the only way I'm going to know Him is to study this Word. God's spoken clearly, and the most powerful force on earth is when the Spirit of God applies the Word of God to the heart and mind of the child of God, to you.

So in this world that inevitably has in it stress, the wear and tear of life, my hope is Jesus. Tonight, I want to give you something I came across that just lit me up - a test for how we're doing, a measuring step, a metrics for determining, how am I doing in this Christian life? We'll talk about it tonight.

Ladies, don't forget 3:30 with Sandy and Jean over in Pacific View.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank you for this awesome and amazing truth. Thank you that it's not about us, it's about you. Thank you that our hope is in you, your character, your sovereignty, your faithfulness, your promise - not a promise like we make, not a promise that we say we'll keep, but we can't. It's a promise that you, the one true God, make.

Father, for those of us today that are struggling with just the wear and tear of life, let us take a deep breath and let us breathe in and let us breathe in your Holy Spirit. We pray that in Christ's name. Amen.