Ah-ha Moments - So How Are You Doing
Tom Shrader uses 1 Thessalonians 1 to offer three key indicators for spiritual health: the work of faith (turning from idols to God in repentance), the labor of love (serving others rather than self), and steadfastness of hope (living with eternal perspective while awaiting Christ's return). He emphasizes that true spiritual growth is measured not by religious activity but by heart transformation that produces genuine love and service.
“If you don't change a person's heart, you don't have real change.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Ah-ha Moments (2016)
Recorded: 2016 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 38 min
Themes: faith, love, hope, repentance, service, spiritual growth, heart transformation, eternal perspective, new believer, struggling with priorities, measuring spiritual progress, seeking purpose, pastor, mentor, evaluating faith, young adult
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 1:1, 1 Thessalonians 1:3, 1 Thessalonians 1:4, 1 Thessalonians 1:9, 1 Thessalonians 1:10, 1 John 5:21, John 10:10, Acts 17
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, idolatry, conversion, eschatology, second coming, spiritual assessment, biblical indicators
Full Transcript
Well, good evening. Great to be with you tonight. A little bit of sadness for us, for Sandy and me. You get the transition here. For many of you, your week is half over. This is it for us. I said to Sandy, we finished this morning and then went for a walk and I said, I'm just not ready to go home. But as Sandy and I were coming over, we ran into Daryl and Holly. Daryl is teaching starting tomorrow night. So I told him we got the bar really low, so for him to get over this should be pretty easy and we're looking forward to it. We love to be there.
How about I get a t-shirt? My 100th talk at Canyon Beach. That was a big deal. I was hoping for a malt, but I know that is a board of directors issue, so we can't do that. I want to thank the worship guys and gal for this week. I get a chance to be with them, to see them, and worship can be a different deal. But to see these guys and to see them work together is something really special. We had dinner together Sunday night, and to just hear them share and to see their genuine affection for one another that goes way beyond music—that's a treat, man. That's something really special. So guys, thank you so much for allowing us to be part of this. It was great and we had a great week.
When I was putting this together, as I've mentioned to you, I was in the process of recovering and I was melancholy. By the way, when I came in and saw the piano open, I thought, uh-oh, Colleen. How about Colleen? What's amazing is I've only been working with her three days, and I was able to take some of that and polish that up, and just brought a whole sense of intensity to it. I have no clue what I'm talking about.
First Time Teaching
But I was going through some notes, and the first lesson—I mentioned it today—the first time I ever taught a Bible lesson was in a Sunday school class. There was a guy who was the assistant chief of police. I never knew him professionally, but he one day said—I know, a little slow, I can only do so much—he had a Sunday school class, and I'd been a Christian three years. He came to me and he said, "I know Larry Wright by reputation, and he's endorsed you, and will you teach a Sunday school class?" I had no clue. All I could say was yes. I had no idea what that meant.
He said, "All right, we're starting the book of First Thessalonians and you'll do chapter one." So I came across in this rehab some old notes of the first time I ever taught. I've never gone back and taught First Thessalonians—any part of it, I don't think—again. I had found some notes that I had made, and I thought this might be a perfect way to end our time.
So How Are You Doing?
Terrible title again tonight: "So How Are You Doing?" How are you doing spiritually? That question can be asked and answered in so many different ways. There's an intuitive way we do it that gets down to Bible studies and prayer and how much you know and how much you memorized. That's okay, I guess.
Probably one of the great ways to evaluate it, though it's totally subjective, is fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. How am I doing in that? Jesus had an opportunity the night before He died, sitting with His guys, to say, "This is how they'll know if you're My disciple." I've always thought that was a fascinating moment, because He's got, if you will, in our language, a whiteboard. He can put anything He wants on there. He could have put Bible study or prayer, go to conferences, but He didn't. He said, "This is how they'll know you're My disciple if you what?" Love one another.
The Context of First Thessalonians
Well, in this passage in First Thessalonians, there's a background that I think makes this particularly applicable. He's writing—he, Paul—is writing one of the chronologically earliest books we have of the New Testament to a church that he had planted maybe just months before. He's writing back to them. They're in this hostile environment.
I think it was Ray Steadman who offered the insight that the first century is probably the most comparable century in terms of change and hostility and aggressiveness to the 20th century. And Steadman writes this: "Simply put, if we cannot discover how to change people, we have no hope for saving the world from ultimate collapse."
A Conference Story
I was doing a conference—an FCA coaches conference—three years ago. In those conferences, they have a segment on marriage, one on finance, one, as you would expect, on coaching, and one on Bible. I was the Bible guy. There was a guy teaching. His name was Jeff Duke. He had been an assistant with Bobby Bowden at Florida State University.
I don't know what it was. I've never had something like this at a conference before. He got up to speak, and he was talking about coaching, and it just connected with me. I've never done this ever in all the conferences. I don't think I've ever said to one of the guys on the panel, "Can I have coffee with you?" I wanted to go get my Bible signed. That's how I felt.
So I met with Duke, and he was just this extraordinary guy. He was an academic, though a football coach—an academic by background. He's at Central Florida University, and you can actually go there and get a master's degree. You're a young guy or gal? That's kind of cool—a master's degree in coaching and leadership. So I was telling him I thought that was fascinating, and I was telling him the connection between what he was doing with coaches and athletes had such a translation into the business world or in any world. He said, "Well, do the 3D stuff. Do the 3D coaching."
So I started doing research. That means that's Wikipedia, okay? I started doing research—for me, that's a little Google. I found some stuff out about sports. They took a survey among 75 of the Fortune 500 companies, and they surveyed executive VP level and above. They found two things: one I expected, one I didn't.
One, they found 47% of them had been National Honor Society members in high school. You expect that. 95% had played at least one year of high school sports. We live at a time when 40% of girls 5 through 18 and 35% of boys 5 through 18 are obese. Sports participation is declining. A girl who participates in high school sports is 90% less likely to get pregnant and 80% less likely to do drugs.
You get into this and you see here's this whole generation of girls and boys. I love to grab certain stats. Here's a stat I'll bet you would have never guessed: 7,000 kids a day drop out of high school. That's a staggering number, coupled with 50% of births are out of wedlock. You can add to it if you just want to do demographics: 10,000 people a day turn 65. You have demographics that are going crazy.
Well, what's the hope for the future? I know it's Jesus. We've really seen lives change through coaches and athletics. But when we're all done, you can change a personality. But what Paul's writing to the church at Thessalonica and what the New Testament screams to us is if you don't change a person's heart, you don't have real change. We're not about behavior modification.
A Transformed Heart and Informed Mind
Remember the first night? A transformed heart and an informed mind - here's the tie together today - is resulting in a radical life. Paul writes to this church at Thessalonica. It's the largest and most important city in the Roman province of Macedonia. That is in the northern part of modern Greece. It still exists as a city. I don't know if vibrance is the word, but we had 44 people from our church who were just there a month ago.
It's a strategic place. That's why Paul's there. It's in the middle of the Pax Romana movement and the Roman Empire and highways and things that are going on. Paul plants this church, and then He looks back and writes this letter.
One author writes this: In this opening chapter, we see Paul at His most winsome. In short, He was going to deal out warnings and rebuke. But before He does, there's this - I don't know if this is a kinder, gentler side of the apostle. There's this side where He doesn't blow smoke at him. He's telling him the truth.
In God, In Christ
Look at verse 1, He writes, "to the church of the Thessalonians, in God, the Father, and in Christ, Jesus." This is vintage old school Ray Steadman. He goes right for this every time. They're geographically in Thessalonica, but they're spiritually - you see it - in God, in Christ.
They've had that experience that we talked about the first night, that we built on in every session. I've come to Christ in repentance and faith. I'm not just religious. I'm a biblical Christian. I can say I know Jesus. He's come into my life. He's changed my life. That's what Paul's writing. He said, you're in Christ.
Look at the result at the end of verse 1: "grace to you and peace." What great words. That forgiveness of sin, that eternal life. Whenever Paul uses those words, you'll always see them in that order. First comes grace, because I can't have the peace of God until I have peace with God. So we've alluded to it, pushed against it, in every session. The world offers up this kind of peace, but what I really want is peace with God, and the result of that is I have the peace of God.
Three Buckets for Self-Examination
So He's writing in this marvelous letter. Here's where we get out. Get your markers, yellow, your highlighting. Here's what He says: "We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers. Constantly bearing in mind" - and look at the three things here - "the work of faith, and labor of love, and steadfastness of hope."
When I picked that title, "how am I doing?" I think I need to look at my life and say, well, there's three - cut me slack terms - there's three buckets that Paul uses. So I can take them and lay them over my life and say, do I see this work of faith, and this labor of love, and this steadfastness of hope, and what do they mean?
I think Paul lays those three things out, and then tells us what they are. So what I'm asking you to do tonight is to do a self-examination, and develop a metrics. That was my first thing when I, what was it, six weeks ago, when I saw Makeda for the first time for my physical therapy, the first day we did the test. It's a how you're doing test.
The Baseline Test
It was, and this will be embarrassing, it was stand on one foot. Which I couldn't do very long. Stand on the other foot. I had to do weights. I started with two pounds. I said, "Wow, that's not very much." And she said, "Well, some people start with air." I said, "Okay." Well, I'm killing those 90-year-olds, but I don't know that. Then I had to do some exercise, I don't remember what it was. I was all done.
I said, "How was that?" She said, "You didn't fall over." But she had to get that baseline. Now, about every, I don't know, 10 days, she takes me back to those same tests. In one way, that's the test for us. Bearing in mind, first of all, this work of faith.
The Work of Faith
Then I think Paul kind of defines in those verses that you see, verse four and following, what is that work of faith. So 1 Thessalonians chapter one, Paul says this in verse four: "knowing beloved by God, His choice of you." He said, we know that God loves you. God chose you. God brought you into this relationship.
"That is, our gospel didn't come to you in word only, but in power, in the Holy Spirit." It wasn't just preached at. You've been there. Maybe you had the experience in your own life. You've had it as you shared with others, where you talk to them, talk to them, talk to them, talk to them. It's the story I shared our first night together. I had people share the gospel with me. But all of a sudden, it was one day, March 6, 1980, by myself, where I experienced what Paul writes here. The gospel came not in word, but in power, full of conviction.
"Just as you know what kind of men we proved to be for your sake, you became imitators of the Lord." So the first question
We come back to this measurement: have you experienced this work of faith? I believe what that work of faith is, and I've added it on your outline down in verse 9, is to turn to God. Have you had that moment of repentance? It means to turn in the opposite direction. If my hand is facing you and my hand repents, it turns from you, but it turns to something.
Have I turned from my own self-effort and religious proclivity? I'm by nature religious. We're extraordinarily religious people. We're worshipping something. You go into the darkest, most remote part of the earth, and they're worshipping sun and moon and wind and fire.
Turning from Idols
Have you turned from idols? John writes a little letter, and he was apparently not very good with titles like I am. So he called this letter 1 John, because there are going to be three of them. He's rolling along, talking about love, and God loves us, and we love God. Then in chapter 5, verse 21, he says, "Little children, guard yourself from idols." That's it.
The guys I hang around with, it seems like we're talking about idols all the time. That's an idol. This is an idol. It can be a very bad thing. It can be a good thing. I know people for whom I think their kids have become an idol.
We got to talk about athletics. At breakfast today, we were talking about how unhealthy sports has gotten - youth sports. My grandson is 10. The other one is 8, and the 8-year-old plays up. This is the first year they played in a league where they're the only ones whose dad, who was an athlete, played baseball at ASU, could have signed, probably never made it, but God saved him and did something different in his life.
They've been around baseball. His dad's coached baseball for 43 years at the same high school. This is the first year that the boys played in a league where every other team was a traveling team. One of those teams - those kids, 10 years old, it's 105 degrees by the way - have played every day since school's been out. It's out of control.
These kids come, and you should see them. They got their hat on. They got $150 Oakleys on backwards. They got a batting bag. They got a $300 Easton bat. They're 10. Did I mention that? They're 10.
The Reality of Youth Sports
Statistically, here's what we learned. Kids play in youth sport - 65% say the number one reason they play, I bet you could guess it, to be with their friends. 65% said the reason I play is to be with my friends. Here's what's staggering: a third of them say, "I'm never going to play this game again next year." And 20% - think about this now, you're coaching this kid - 20% say they want to get better at the sport they're playing. Four out of five don't even care if they get better at it. But their mom's got them out there. Their dad's got them out there.
What are those things that are idols in your life? It's very simple. It's any person, place, or thing I'm looking to for that crucial longing to be satisfied - anything other than Jesus. How are you doing in that work of faith?
The Labor of Love
I love this. And then the labor of love. What is that? I think the answer is down here: to serve the living and true God. If we want to be first in the kingdom of God, we do that by falling to the bottom, not climbing to the top.
I got an email. I was telling Sandy the other day, Sandy signed me up and I've been getting some daily emails that are absolutely fabulous. This guy was talking about leadership. He took servant leadership and simply, rather than say servant leadership, he flipped the words and said that that person at the top is not a servant leader as a lead servant. That was powerful. I'm the leader who serves. It doesn't mean I don't lead. I'm here to serve.
It's so hard because my life - it doesn't matter what the topic is - I can make it all about me eventually. Sandy said the nicest thing to me the other day. When she said it, I don't think she even knew it. She'd been at a meeting and it was dinnertime. They were done eating and there was one cookie. Sandy doesn't eat a lot of cookies, but she had a hankering. There's a good old term. She had a hankering for a cookie.
So she went over and as she got there, she was there and then a guy who wanted that cookie too. So he took the cookie and he broke it into a glaringly bigger part than a smaller part and then generously offered her the smaller part. Here's what she said to me. It meant so much to me. She said, "Tom, whenever you split something, you always give me the biggest part."
Small Acts of Service
I never thought she noticed. I do. I cut it deliberately bigger and give it to her, hoping she'll say, "Oh, no, you take it." Okay, that's the whole plan in this deal. The whole time I'm going, "You don't want this. You don't eat this. I ought to have both parts."
This is how I know. This is how I know I'm beginning to change. All of a sudden, in those rare moments, you begin to think of people other than you - a labor. It means to toil, to do to the point of exhaustion, to love, to care about somebody other than yourself. What about me? Mine? Me?
When I was a young man, politics was a big interest to me. I was born and raised Catholic. So John Kennedy was like this icon. When John Kennedy's running for president, our house - we didn't have a Bible in it, but we had a picture of John Kennedy. I had one of Marilyn Monroe, but that's a cheap shot. That's cheap, but good.
When John Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" - take that timeframe. That's 1960, January 1960. At the first town hall with George W. Bush and Al Gore when they were running, they had a group about this size. The first question was, "If you're elected president, what are you going
The Radical Life of Service
That's a long way from "ask not what your country can do for you." I'm not talking politics. I'm talking about this is who I am naturally. But when all of a sudden you realize, hey, you're waiting on people. You're holding a door. I'm not talking here about huge things. I'm talking about serving right where you are.
It's radical. That's the radical life. People ought to see us as Christians, and they ought to realize that we're not odd. Some of us have that down. Not odd. Unique. There's something different about you. What is it? I don't know. You seem legitimately concerned about other people for real reasons. You're there to serve.
A Simple Test of the Heart
You ladies today, thank you for coming out to support Sandy. I lose the bet every time because it's all... And I think she said it to you, the first question is always, "How did you end up with him?" They ask it differently, but how did you end up with him? I don't know what she gave you as an answer, but it's really simple. When God saved her, she decided that she didn't need a guy. She didn't need to date. So she went eight years without a date. And the moral of the story is, after eight years, even I look good to you. So that's how that happened.
But when I was getting to know Sandy and I'm talking to her, I'm trying to learn her story. I'd seen her around church. I said, "What do you do?" And she said, "Well, I worked in children's ministry, and I've worked in student ministry, and I've worked in hospitality." And I said, "Can you not make a commitment to a ministry? Or what's the problem?" And she said, "No. Whenever you get up and you say you need help, I figure we're here to serve. I'm going to go where you tell me you need help."
Is that your heart? It's a real simple test. It's the labor of love. It's to serve the one true God. It's to be concerned, not about yourself and what does it mean to me, but what can I do for you? It's not about you and your way and what's best. It's about serving the people around you and leading as you serve. Walking across the campus and picking up paper that's on the ground.
The Flinch of Self-Focus
How are you doing in that? Because I'll tell you what the flinch is, and I don't know if this ever goes away. It sure didn't in my life. The flinch is, "What about me? What about me? What about me?" And as you see that begin to diminish, you begin to see that God's working in your life.
Because if you've turned from idols, if you've come to Christ in repentance and faith, there has to be a life change. No life change, no biblical assurance that that salvation is real. Your life is transformed. And not just through the action—let me say it again—of conferences and Bible study and reading. I'm all about that. I love that stuff. Somebody recommended a book to me, and I checked it out and ordered that, and then I got on the website and found three other books. So when I get home tomorrow or the following day, those books will be there. I'll read them in the next two weeks. They'll be marked up. I'm all about that.
But this is not about studying the Bible so I can run a category on Jeopardy. "I'll have Deuteronomy for 600, Alex." That's not what this is about. This is about life transformation.
Turning the World Right Side Up
This is about you turning the world, and that's what happened. When Paul and his buddies come to Thessalonica, they say in Acts 17, "These are the men who turned the rest of the world upside down. Now they've come to our city." Paul didn't turn the world upside down, did He? What did He do? He turned it right side up.
We have a presidential candidate that can't stop categorizing people as winners or losers. I guess I'm all right with that. But what does a winner look like? Not somebody with a private jet—somebody who loves Jesus and serves Him. There are people who are winners in the world's eyes who are losers in God's eyes.
I have a friend. He's a Christian guy, good guy, leads a ministry. His dad hates Jesus, and he defines missionaries this way. So this is this godless guy's definition of a missionary: "Losers chasing losers." Now part of me goes back and says, "Those are fighting words." Well, in reality, no, it's kind of true. I'm a person who's lost, who's found a way, who now takes what I found and takes it to the world. And when Jesus grabbed my heart, He didn't turn me upside down. He set me right side up.
Switched Price Tags
Tony Campolo wrote a book years ago called "Who Switched the Price Tags?" I don't know if any of you ever read that book or even remember it, but Campolo was a feisty little guy, and he and his buddy used to go in a drugstore. One guy would distract the clerk, and the other would go over, and they'd find, you know, an ink pen that was $3 and a knife that was $10, and they wanted the knife. While one distracted the other, the other would switch the price tags, and they'd buy the knife for $3.
Campolo said, "When I came to Christ, I looked around and said, somebody switched all the price tags in the world. What the world's calling valuable, God goes, 'Yeah, I don't want to minimize it, but that's not life.'" Life is not about stuff. I think Sandy went there today with John 10:10: "I've come that you have life and have it abundantly." But real life isn't found in stuff; it's found in Christ.
Steadfastness in Hope
Here's the last thing, and we've touched on it, it seems like, in every session, and there is this work of faith, and this labor of love, and there's this steadfastness in hope. As Paul wrote to this church at Thessalonica, one of the big problems they had is that they had become confused about Jesus coming again. Jesus has said, "If I leave, I will come back." They're waiting for Him.
Within this church at Thessalonica, there were people that were saying, "All right, He's coming back." And they were having all sorts of tensions and confusion in that. Now Paul writes and He said, "We wait," verse 10, "for His Son from heaven, whom, looking back, He raised from the dead." Part of what I've
What I've done in the last two or three months is just reread sections of scripture that I've been going to, and I start to read and go, "I know all that." A little arrogance there. I went back and I was reading, because I'm trying to go, okay, what's that preaching? What's that kernel?
There's books all over, and again, I read them, but I went back and I said, what are the messages that Paul's preaching, Peter's preaching in the book of Acts? Every one of them was crucifixion, resurrection, crucifixion, resurrection, crucifixion, resurrection. He was saying, here's 101: Christ died, and then on that Easter morning—this is really important—not that the tomb was empty, but that Christ was alive.
The Reality of Our Hope
The tomb was empty because Christ was gone and alive, and He's coming back another day, and that's our hope. Our citizenship is not this passport that says US of A. Our citizenship is in heaven. To be absent from the body, present with the Lord.
That I am—okay, this is a note, this is tweetable—I'm as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. That's staggering. There's nothing I can do at this point to end that. I don't want to. I can't out-sin His grace. I can't maximize His love.
Haven't we heard this enough? I can't make Him love me anymore. I can't make Him love me any less. This blows me away, as much as it blows you away. Because intuitively, religiously, we get the sense we're on probation. God loves me, but He's not going to be loving me like this next year if I'm at the same spot. No, I'm going to be with Him forever.
Three Essential Questions
So when somebody says, "How you doing?" and you really seriously want to contemplate that question, which I think you should, I'd encourage you to go to 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 and look at these three big buckets.
Have you come to Christ in repentance and faith? And I can tell you, one of the easiest places to hide from God is a Christian conference center or church. Join the choir. He's never going to look for you there. You can hide there. You can be religious and not be a follower of Christ.
Have you turned from the idols to God? And in your life, are you collecting those idols along the way? Do you have in your life, are you known for your labor of love? And I'm going to put it this way: use the spiritual gift that God's given you—service.
The Heart of Service
I was today walking across the grounds and saw all sorts of volunteers that are out trimming bushes, making this place look pretty. People that are around saying, "Is there something I can do to help you?" Is that your heart, a servant's heart, leading from that place? Not thinking I'm better than you.
You will never serve someone with the right motive if you're looking down on them. If you think you're better than them, it won't happen. You might serve them. You might serve them well, but you'll serve them with the wrong motive.
And then are you living in that constant reality? Not that Jesus is real, but that one day I'll be with Him—here we go—forever. My last breath here, my first breath with Him, forever. The one we sing about, the one we say we love more than anything else.
The Real Test
I hope and I know the rest of this week will be amazing. I also know that the real test is not probably going to be here. It's going to be Saturday, driving back to Tacoma or Portland or Kentucky. That's a long haul. And "how are you doing" will be categorized, evaluated in those three categories.
I'm so jealous of your next three days here and what a great time that's going to be. And thank you for allowing Sandy and me to be here, be part of the team to serve you this week.
Let me pray as the guys come to close our time together. Father, thank You for this. Thank You for Jeff and the team and this place. Thank You for Archie and Evangeline's dream and vision. Thank You for people who love You and live life accordingly. God, we pray that our lives would be constantly a work of faith and a labor of love and we would be rock solid in our steadfastness of hope in anticipation of Jesus' return. We pray to You in His name, amen.