What I Learned on My Summer Vacation, Part 1 (2003)

Tom Shrader resumes a series on salvation and glorification, anchoring the teaching in Romans 8:29-30's golden chain and the certainty that all whom God foreknew will be glorified. Turning to Philippians 3:12-14, he draws out Paul's principles for living purposefully in the present: accepting life as a learning process, pressing toward a defined purpose rather than scattered goals, releasing past failures, and maintaining a singular focus. The core idea is that a future already secured by God — though not yet experienced — exerts a powerful and practical influence on how believers engage with everyday life now.

“I am saved by God, from God, for God — from His wrath, from His judgment, and for His glory, and nothing can break that.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

Recorded: 2003 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 59 min

Themes: purpose, hope, perseverance, letting go, focus, future, daily living, pressing forward, feeling stuck in the past, struggling with failure, young adult, new believer, searching for purpose, spiritually discouraged, mentor, midlife reflection

Scripture: Romans 8:29-30, Philippians 3:12-14, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 2 Timothy 2:10

Theological Themes: glorification, soteriology, golden chain, foreknowledge, Romans 8, salvation, sanctification, already not yet

Full Transcript

Welcome Back and Introducing the Series

I want to say out loud what is likely on your mind, and that is how grateful I am for the four young men who taught while I was gone. It was absolutely magnificent. I had an opportunity to come back on two Sundays because I wanted to hear all four of them.

I wanted to accomplish two things. First, I wanted them to have an opportunity to use their giftedness — to take it for a test ride, to see what would happen when they stood up here. But secondarily, and maybe primarily in my mind, I wanted you to see them. Before I came to East Valley Bible Church, I was in two different very large churches, and to the best of my knowledge, those churches — with thousands and thousands of people in them — never produced one man who went on to be a senior pastor. There may have been one or two; I don't know. Certainly there was no movement of it.

That was not part of our design at the time, and it wasn't something I thought about, but it is something God has done. God has brought literally a dozen men who I believe one day could be pastoring churches — significant works, either church plants or other churches here or around the valley, around the country. Do you understand that the oldest of those four men who taught you is 26, and the youngest is 22? I told them I have socks older than they are.

That should reinforce in you how you need to think beyond your little slice of the pie, even within the church here. You may be very involved in one ministry — that is good, that is fine — but there is a whole body at work. Be thinking that way. Be thinking kingdom. That is what we are constantly doing, and it means there is an extraordinary price to pay and an extraordinary responsibility to carry. It absolutely energizes me to see that.

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

Whenever I leave and come back from summer vacation, I do what I call "What I Learned on My Summer Vacation." We had a wonderful summer this year — very low key, very different from what we typically do. We went up to Flagstaff and had a magnificent time. Every night there was lightning and thunder and rain, and we would go out on the porch around eight o'clock, eat dinner, and watch the lightning. Then we went over to the coast, and that was magnificent as well.

Then I went home — back to Iowa to visit my folks. My brother came in and we played golf: six rounds total. I played two very poorly, one mediocre, and then three pretty good rounds. But the real focus of the trip was playing cards with my mom. She takes that stuff very seriously, and she plays for keeps.

At one point I was getting up to leave in the middle of a session, and she was getting ready to shuffle the cards. I told her she was not allowed to deal the cards when I was not in the room. There is a little history here, because last winter when she was visiting, she was caught cheating. She said it was stupid, and I said I did not care if it was stupid — if she dealt the cards without me watching her shuffle, I was not playing them.

When I came back, that started a debate about whether she had really cheated or not. Then came a great moment — and in a rather creative turn of phrase, here is what she said: "If I cheat, I cheat fairly." I started writing that down immediately. She said, "What are you writing that down for?" I said, "That has to go into What I Learned on My Summer Vacation." She said, "Don't you go back there and tell those people I cheat." I told her I would not. So if I lie, I lie fairly — but she cheats. There is nothing better than when she gets mad and throws the cards at me. She said, "I taught you everything you know about cards," and I said, "No — you taught me everything *you* know about cards. That is not everything I know about cards." The dialogues were entertaining, but more importantly, I won. I just drilled her all week.

Picking Up Where We Left Off

Four weeks ago, just before I left, I said to press the pause button right there because I wanted to pick up right where I left off — even within this summer vacation series. The singular point encompassed in those two weeks was this simple statement: I am saved by God, from God, for God.

If you are new to the church or new to the faith, go back to the website and pull up those two lessons. If you can really dig in and get hold of this, so many of your theological questions get answered very quickly. The most frequently asked question we receive — other than anything to do with eschatology — is this: can I lose my salvation? Is it possible for me, if I am a Christian today, to lose that salvation? All sorts of questions about free will come along with it.

Here is the framework that addresses those questions: I am saved by God — He did it all. I am saved from God — from His wrath, from His judgment. And I am saved for God — for His glory. We spent a great deal of time looking at Romans 8, verses 29 and 30, where Paul writes, "For whom God foreknew, He predestined. And whom He predestined, He called. And whom He called, He justified. And whom He justified, He glorified."

Now take a look at that for a moment. There is something clearly stated in this passage. Every person that He foreknew was predestined. Every person He predestined, He called. Every person He called, He justified.

Recap: The Golden Chain of Salvation

Every person He justified, He glorified. He did not lose any along the way. We covered the definitions of those words in our last session. To foreknow carries the idea of intimacy. It is not simply that God knows everything — though we know that — so it is not as though He merely knew what everybody was going to do. There was a special relationship initiated by Him before the foundations of the earth. He predestined us, He marked us, He set us out. He called us — that is the work of the Holy Spirit on our life, to bring us to a point of saving faith in Christ. He justified us, and that refers to our being made right with God.

When we left off, we were on this last point: that we too, who are foreknown and predestined and called and justified, will be glorified. In the original language, Paul uses a word speaking of a future event in the past tense. What Paul is saying is that this is absolutely certain. This is the use of language to take a point and drive it home. This is as certain and real as this pulpit right here — though it may be an event out there in the future, it was done in the past, and it will be done.

That is a very important point. As you are making your way through your Christian life, there are times where you are struggling and wondering how this is going to turn out. You wonder if you will let go. You wonder about the future. Remember that when Paul wrote about that future glorification, he did it in a past tense to emphasize that it is a done deal. You are His. It is signed, sealed, delivered, done. Nothing can break that.

This truth should not give you a spirit of license — the attitude that says you can do whatever you want. It should give you a sense of comfort that God is working in your life, that He will never leave you and will never forsake you. That is exactly where we left off, and now we pick it back up.

A Book About the Brain and a Surprising Insight

While I was gone, I read a wide, eclectic range of material — sports books, biographies, histories, just a ton of stuff. One of the books I read was called *Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot*, and it is about unleashing your brain's potential. I think every person — and certainly every guy who turns fifty or so and suddenly forgets his own cell phone number — starts to think the decline is coming fast. So I saw this book and thought it might help stimulate the brain. I picked it up, though I did not understand a lot of it. It is about how the brain works, and the author includes brain exercises and puzzles to solve — which I skipped.

In the midst of that book, around the third chapter, the author writes two sentences that caught my attention. He is talking about time and says that time exists in a unity, with past, present, and future flowing into one like a montage. Then he says this: not only can the past influence the present and the future, but the future — which by definition does not even yet exist — can exert a powerful effect on the present.

That last phrase jumped off the page at me. The future does not even exist by definition; it is still in the future. Yet it has an extraordinarily powerful effect on the present. That made me think immediately of the pause button we had hit — the discussion about being glorified, a future event spoken of in the past tense, and its certainty. Our future does already exist in a sense. It is already certain. And if there is anyone on this planet for whom that sentence should ring true, it is us as Christians. More than anyone else, we should be living with a future that exerts enormous influence on the present.

Paul's Vision of the Unseen Future

All the New Testament writers seem to have that in mind, and none more clearly than Paul. Here is a passage we have looked at before. In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul says this: "Though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day. Momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." And then he gives the key: "We do not look at the things that are seen, but at the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

Paul is saying there is this future that in a sense does not even exist yet, but it is a reality that exerts enormous influence on the way we live. Life is tough, he acknowledges. The outer man is decaying. The world around us is winding down. Things are falling apart and do not always work well together. Yet in the midst of that, for a Christian, the inner man — not the outer man, not the skin, but the inner man — is renewed day by day. This momentary, light affliction is producing an eternal weight of glory. The key, Paul says, is not getting sidetracked by this world and the temporal, but fixing your mind on the eternal. That perspective seems to permeate all of his writing.

In 2 Timothy 2:10, just one more example, Paul writes: "For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory." That future reality is what drives Paul to endure. It exerts influence on the way he lives right now.

Paul also expressed it this way: he said he was torn in two directions, on the horns of a dilemma, because he knew that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. His desire was to go and to be present with the Lord, to be with Him and to enjoy Him forever. That is the eternal. Those are the things he could not see. That was the focus of his life. Yet he also knew he had to live here in the present. We can draw some very helpful and practical advice from that.

The Secret of Living in the Present

The Apostle Paul offers us something we need to put in our arsenal as we begin to work our way through life and deal with the here and now. Here is Paul, who understands the future, and yet he does not say society is a mess, everything is falling apart, and then withdraw from it. He goes and lives right in the midst of it. There is very little condemning of society in the Apostle Paul — not a lot of debate about whether there are Ten Commandments in a judge's hall or not. He is saying you have bigger problems than all of that.

Paul, understanding the future, did not say he would withdraw from the world, nor did he sit and mark off the days until Jesus comes or he dies. He went in and lived life to the fullest, so that at the end of it he could say, "I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith." How did he do that? He learned the secret of living in the present.

Philippians 3: Pressing On

Open your Bibles to Philippians chapter 3. That should sound familiar, because while I was gone, Michael took the opportunity to teach that chapter. He was much more ambitious than I am — he tackled the whole chapter. I am going to carve out just three verses and see how they apply to the challenge before us, which is to let that invisible reality of glorification — already spoken about in the past tense yet belonging to the future — actually affect our lives now.

Paul writes: "Not that I have already obtained it" — and what is he talking about? He has been talking about humility in chapter 2, about spiritual pedigree, about how he was a very religious man and yet he counts all of it, as the King James says, as dung compared to knowing Christ in the power of the resurrection. "Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

There are some very basic, elementary, fundamental principles to take from this passage. They might be helpful as you try to live here and now, slug it out in this world, knowing that you will be glorified. The question is: how do you live for Him in the present?

Getting the Basics Right

Before I left, I played some golf toward the end of my vacation. Normally I hit a ton of balls to get ready, but this year I did not, and the last golf I played was awful. So I decided rather than hit balls, I would read a book about golf and fix things on the driving range when I got there. I went back to Ben Hogan's classic book on golf, and I was struck — having read it many times before — by how simple it is.

Jack Nicklaus says ninety percent of all bad golf shots occur before the club moves away from the ball. In other words, you are holding the club wrong or you are set up wrong. If I am trying to hit a shot down one line but my body is pointed another direction, my mind is going to see that and produce a swing that goes completely off course. If I am gripping the club too weakly I cannot get through the ball, and if I am gripping too strongly I come through all wrong. These are basic, elementary things. And the things we are going to look at today are really basic — but when they are in place, it is amazing how smoothly you begin to see life and feel its effects.

Paul Accepts That Life Is a Learning Process

Here is the first thing Paul says: "Not that I have already obtained it." Paul accepts the idea that life is a learning process. In fact, the term "continuing education" is redundant — life itself is education.

Harvard did a study, and I will be honest, this does not sound right to me, but I cannot imagine Harvard lying. They found that a person, when they are done with their last year of college — whether that means someone who went to a community college for a semester or someone who earned a PhD from Stanford — seventy-five percent of those people, according to this study, never again read another book cover to cover for the rest of their lives. That is an astonishing number. How are you going to learn and grow and stay vibrant?

Howard Hendricks tells a magnificent story of going to a woman's eightieth birthday party. He came in and she kept asking how he was doing, what was going on in his life. He said, "No, no — this is your birthday, this is your day. What are you doing?" A few months later, that lady died. Her daughter called Howard and said, "I want you to come over and see what Mom was doing right before she died." Howard went over, and the daughter took him upstairs into her mother's bedroom. There on the desk, typed out, completed, and folded — finished just a couple of days before — this eighty-year-old woman had completed her ten-year plan.

I meet a lot of people, and I will be honest, most of them outside the church — thirty years old and dead as a doornail. Ninety-eight point six degrees, working out at the gym, and everyone looks at them and says, "Aren't they great?" But they are dead. Intellectually, they are gone. There is nothing there. They are not growing, they are not stimulated. I would hate to live that way. Jimmy Buffett has a great line in one of his songs: "I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead." I do not want to just go through life going through the motions. Paul says: listen, I understand that learning is a lifelong process.

Pressing On: A Lifestyle of Growth

I want to be alive and I want to be growing. I speak specifically to those of you who are grandparents, a little older — don't stop learning. Go out and buy yourself a computer; it isn't that tough. All you have to do is point and push. If it asks you a question, just say yes and see where it takes you. That's what I do, and then I have to say, "Michelle, I don't know where I am." Don't stop. Don't be intimidated by this — go for it.

Paul said, "I haven't already obtained it," and, "nor have I become perfect." He had a very accurate view of himself. That word "perfect" means complete, mature. He said, "I haven't arrived." He saw himself as he really was — a very accurate view of himself.

The Trap of Self-Image

We live in a world that is obsessed with self-image. I love infomercials. We were two weeks on the coast without a TV, and everybody was giving me a bunch of grief — they said I would never last. I did a lot of reading and I'm in the midst of a lot of reading and a lot of thinking right now, which is a dangerous sign, certainly for the staff at East Valley Bible Church.

As I watched some TV the other day, I watched an infomercial for The Firm, and I watched one for Proactiv. My favorite part of any infomercial is the testimonials, and they all say roughly the same thing. There's one where some guy does a body — I don't know what the product is — and this lady is talking about how it changed her life. He comes out and surprises her and she says, "You've changed my life." And what they say — and we just accept this language nowadays — is, "I didn't even want to go out of the house, I was so conscious about how I looked. Now I feel good about myself again."

I understand some of that. But the fallacy is this: whether you are inflated with pride or deflated with low self-esteem, in either case the mistake is the same — you are thinking about yourself. Now, it is important to have an accurate view of yourself, but that is different from being consumed with yourself.

Seeing Ourselves Clearly

I had a discussion with a guy recently. Most of you only see me from the front, and I think I'm fairly forthright up here — sometimes fairly aggressive — but I'm a gentle, easy guy off this platform. I'm the softest touch in the world. In settings where we have to critique a speaker, there is no way I'm going to say anything critical. That's just not what I do.

But this guy came to me and said, "I need some help. When I come into a room, everything stops. People walk on eggshells around me. What's wrong?" I knew this guy pretty well, and I said — and this was uncharacteristic of me, but I was trying to break out of my shell — "You're the problem. People walk on eggshells because you demand it."

He said what I would say at that moment: "Give me an example." I said, "How about yesterday?" and I recounted a specific conversation. I asked, "Is that accurate?" He said yes. "Is that what you said?" Yes. "Is that how it went? I was in the room." Yes. "Do you see how that killed everybody and everything?" He said, "No, I don't see it at all."

After about three hours of this, I really did conclude that this guy simply doesn't see it. That's tough. I told him, "You're going to have to have three people around you who are constantly telling you what's going on. You're going to have to learn to see this." Getting an accurate view of who you are is a very difficult thing, primarily because pride will always push you to think more highly of yourself than you really should.

Laid Hold of for a Purpose

Paul says, "I haven't obtained this. I'm not completely mature." Look at verse 12: *"But I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus."* That term "lay hold" means to seize, obtain, comprehend, perceive, understand. What Paul is telling us here is that Christ saved him — laid hold of him, seized him — for a reason, for a purpose. And Paul is saying he wants to understand what that is.

The New Living Translation paraphrases verse 12 this way: *"I don't mean to say that I've already achieved these things or that I've already reached perfection. But I keep working toward the day when I will finally be all that Christ saved me for and wants me to be."*

That raises an important question: what did God want to accomplish in your life beyond salvation? God saved you for a reason, for a purpose. What is it? You need to be going back to this constantly, and it's going to change — it's a moving target. Things are different at different stages of life.

A New Season

While we were gone, something very significant happened in our family. Sarah was building a home, and she moved out and moved into that house. Our house now has in it Susan and me — it's very, very different. I came home yesterday and did a bunch of work to get ready for this, and I said, "I think I'm going to take a shower and go to bed." Susan said, "It's 6:30, Tom." I said, "Well, by the time I'm out of the shower the sun will be down." She said, "This is pathetic. We have got to figure this out."

The Law of Focus

Our lives are in transition. There are going to be moments when you change, but God saved you for a reason and for a purpose. What is that purpose? You are unique. You are different. You have had different experiences in life. Maybe you are in the middle of something very hurtful and painful right now. Why would God let you go through this? Why would He allow it? Or perhaps the even greater question — why would He cause it?

Bob Buford wrote a book called *Halftime*. His point is this: we used to live to be 50, and now we live to be 75. Our generation has been gifted with a second adulthood. It used to be that 50 was around the time you would die. That is now, at least for many of us, the time when the kids are raised and we are moving on to the next part of life. We have a whole other adulthood ahead of us. What are you going to do with it?

Paul says he is pressing on. He wants to understand why God laid hold of him and what God wants to do in his life. Then he says something extraordinary in verse 13: "This one thing I do." That is the law of focus.

One Thing That Permeates Everything

What summarizes your life? Paul did many different things — he was a teacher, a mentor, a friend, an evangelist — but he said there is this one thing he does. Paul tends to speak in these terms. Remember when he said he preached Christ and Christ crucified? Yet if you read through his writings, he talked about marriage, singleness, work, and parenting. What is he saying? He is saying there is one thing that permeates everything else. There has to be a law of focus.

I understand the tension here, and I will say it plainly: I do not buy the myth of a balanced life. Balanced people do not accomplish great things. I read a book on Churchill while I was away. Churchill could not spell the word balance. I also read a biography on Grant. Grant was not a militarily balanced man. But here is the point — Paul says, "I do one thing. I only do one thing. This is what I do."

My mentor Larry Wright is a good example of this. When you would go to Larry and talk to him about different things, here is what he would say: "I teach Bible. I teach Bible." He did many other things, but he understood that there was one preeminent point of focus in his life.

Do you have that? What is that one thing for you? It is going to permeate all the other things, but it is one thing that drives everything else. Or are you shooting in every direction at once — this is your deal, and this is your deal, and this is your deal?

Saying No So You Can Do the Great Things

If you go to your nightstand, you have a stack of great books, all read about 20 or 30 pages in. Your calendar is filled with things that are half done. You are going in a thousand different directions, not getting much accomplished, and you are frustrated and tired. What you may need to learn is how to say no — no to people, no to things.

I will speak from my own life. My life is filled with really good things, but I do not have much time anymore for good things. I can only focus on the great things. I have a finite amount of time and a whole menu of things that need to get done. I am very comfortable saying that something is not going to get done because something else is more important. One thing. That is the focus.

Forgetting What Lies Behind

Paul also says he forgets what lies behind. Do not waste a great deal of time reliving past failures. When I fly back to the Quad Cities, I am immediately hit with all sorts of memories. That place, along with here, represents where I did the vast majority of my sinning — really bad stuff.

When I go back, we play cards, we golf, and a friend puts together a night where six or seven guys who went to high school together, along with their wives, all get together. Any one of those people could blow everything apart just by talking about what I was like. I know that. But I cannot change it. I cannot undo it.

Maybe you are here today and there is something in your past — some event that took place back there — and it is still in your mind. Or maybe you are right in the middle of it right now. I do not know what to say to you other than this: let it go. Just get rid of it. You have been forgiven.

I use this illustration often. It is as if you are walking around dragging a ball and chain. That ball and chain is a sin, a guilt, something you do that you enjoy in the middle of but hate when you are done — or even hate while you are doing it. Then you are saved. You are delivered. You are rescued. God reaches down and cuts that chain free, and many of you reach over, pick the ball back up, and start hauling it around again. That does not make any sense. We laugh about it because we know it is true.

I have been forgiven. I cannot undo the past. I am not going to waste time worrying about something I cannot fix. Failure is not fatal. In fact, I would argue that failure is a very good thing in your life — if you are smart enough to learn from it and grow as a result. Failure is a good thing.

Goals Versus Purpose

"I'm reaching forward to what lies ahead. I got one thing that I do, and I'm forgetting what lies behind, and I'm reaching forward." This is not typically something I would talk about in this setting — I would save it more for the business environment — but let me bring this to you a little bit because I think it's helpful. Paul is talking about something we talk about all the time: goals and purpose. Do you understand the difference between the two?

A goal is something that is short-term, measurable, and attainable. It is a milestone on a path to something. Purpose is different. It extends beyond your life. You serve it, but you never attain it. You achieve a goal. You never achieve a purpose. You never complete it. So if I say to you, my desire is to read through the Bible in a year, is that a goal or a purpose? It is a goal. If I say my desire is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, goal or purpose? Purpose.

These next two word pictures were very helpful to me because I would meet people all the time who were achieving goals. They sat down at the end of the year, at the end of a business cycle, at the end of a quoted time, and they would go — check, check, check, done, done, done — and yet they were miserable and frustrated. The reason is they were living a goal-oriented life, not a purpose-oriented life.

Here is a picture of a goal-oriented life. It is you there in the middle, and you have these goals around you. They are not random, but they are connected basically to you. And so you can sit down at the end of a period of time and say, "I did that, I did that, I did that," and yet not feel like you are growing or advancing. You are frustrated, and yet you are a successfully frustrated person.

Look at the difference in a purpose-oriented life. All of those goals are driving toward one purpose, and that one purpose permeates all of the areas of your life. All of a sudden, you see the thing.

The Weight Loss Illustration

Let me give you a great example. Say you want to lose weight. Why bother? Eating is a lot more fun than not eating. I would much rather have ice cream, cheeseburgers, buns, and fries than broccoli and asparagus — I think that is true. So you go and you lose 30 pounds, you have achieved it, and yet you are frustrated. Why? Because you are hungry for ice cream and brownies and everything else. That is not hard to figure out. You have got to find something greater than the brownie.

I fought this battle for years and years. Somebody the other day said I had lost a lot of weight and asked how much. I do not know. I do not get on a scale. I do not care. My desire is to button my pants and breathe. That is my goal — that is all I am trying to achieve. I have no grand plan. I just want to be able to breathe.

Here is why. When my clothes fit, I can study longer. I can study more intently. I am more prepared. This series of six services is a grueling thing — it is very physically hard, much more physically hard than mentally hard. It is very hard on my back. But it is much easier if my clothes fit and I am carrying less weight. So I do not care about losing the weight to lose the weight. I care about losing the weight to achieve the purpose.

All of a sudden, everything has meaning and direction. Even the goals that require sacrifice and investment become easier because they have a reason beyond themselves. Do you see that? I want you to play with that, because it has a great application in your life — and if you are in business, it has a huge application in your life.

Pressing Toward the Prize

Then Paul summarizes all of this. He says, "I press on toward the goal" — the King James says "the mark," the spot out in the distance — "for the prize," which is the award given to the victor of the game. It is a metaphor for the heavenly reward of the Christian life. Paul says, "I press on toward that goal, toward that mark. I want the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

You think Paul understood Romans 8? Well, he wrote it. Paul said, "Look, I know that everyone that He foreknew He predestined, and everyone He predestined He called, and everyone that He called He justified, and everyone He justified He glorified." And Paul said, I just want to stay focused so that I can strive to lay hold of that for the very purpose and reason that He laid hold of me. I want to go and go and go and go.

Paul is saying he is willing to forego everything else for this process, because this is more important than anything else. That, my friend, is how you live in the present with a very clear understanding of a future certainty — a certainty that, in a sense, does not yet exist, and yet has a profound effect on your life today.

The Hundred

While I was gone, I was reacquainted with a book called *The Hundred* — a ranking of the most influential people in history. And this author sets out to—

The Most Influential People in History

A book ranks the hundred most influential people in history. Here are the top six: Muhammad, Isaac Newton, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, and Paul. All sorts of debates arise from this list, as you can imagine — why Isaac Newton and not another scientist, whether Muhammad is more influential than Jesus, and so on. Those are all interesting discussions. There is something very interesting about that list when you look at it and think about it, and I will talk about that next week.

Solitude and Isaac Newton

There is one man on that list I want to focus on now: Isaac Newton. There is a new book out about him — about 200 pages, with a lot of science in it, which I don't fully understand, along with some material about his life. As I was reading through this book, I came across a sentence. Here it is: "Solitude was the essential to his genius." I read the sentence again. Solitude was the essential to his genius.

It doesn't say it was a contributing factor. It doesn't say it was important. It says it was essential. I didn't pick the words — the author said it is the essential to his genius. I put the book down, walked around, played with that idea in my mind for a while, came back, and read the sentence again. Solitude was the essential to his genius. I said, that's incredible. That's an incredible sentence. I didn't know exactly what it meant, but it was an incredible sentence.

All of a sudden I was swept away in the idea of solitude. If solitude was important to Isaac Newton — who the author of this book says is the second most influential man in the history of mankind — might solitude not also be important to us? And if it is important to us, what does solitude mean? That is what I want to look at next week: this whole idea of solitude in our life.

Coming Studies: A Harmony of the Gospels

The following week, we are going to do something I didn't mention at the other services. The elders have granted me a little leeway, and what I am going to do is what I wanted to do from the beginning — a harmony of the Gospels. I don't know that we will get all the way through them; we may stop and go back and do some of Paul's work. But basically, we are going to take the four Gospels, put them together, and study them right on through.

I sat down with Michelle today to start talking about the background work and the research for this, and she said, "We're never going to get through this." She saw the difficulty of it, and it is going to be very hard. But I think it could be one of the most important studies we do. We have spent a lot of time on doctrine, and now I want to move into the life of Christ — and then we will go back and forth from there.

We are going to take all four Gospels, put them together beginning to beginning, and work right through to the end. It should be a great study, and I would think it will take us longer than a month. We will start that two weeks from today.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for this. Thank You for these men and women who are here today, and for the students and the children. God, let us live lives that are consciously aware of this future that has already been accomplished and achieved for us. God, thank You for Jesus, for His life and His death, for the salvation that we find in Him and Him alone.

God, we pray that You would help us understand our life and that You have saved us. Is there something about us, something distinctive, that You have set us apart for? Then give us the courage and the determination to not be discouraged and to pursue this. God, thank You. Let us live like Paul — this one thing we do: we forget what lies behind and we press forward. God, let that be a driving principle in our life. We pray to You in Jesus' name. Amen.