How to Make 2004 Your Best Year Ever
Tom Shrader contrasts worldly ambition — defined by insatiable desire, obsession with self, and absence of satisfaction — with a distinctly Christian ambition grounded in scripture. Drawing from 2 Timothy 1, 1 Corinthians 7, Romans 9, Philippians 1, and Ephesians 3, he outlines five practical objectives: improving human relationships, increasing freedom from enslavement to others' opinions, intensifying personal passion for a worthy cause, expanding one's cultural and intellectual perspective, and relying on the strengthening power of the Holy Spirit. The central claim is that an extraordinary year is possible regardless of external circumstances, because spiritual vitality depends not on the world's conditions but on one's alignment with God's purposes.
“You were in bondage to sin, and now you're free — not the peace that comes from getting everything you want, but the presence of God in your life.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Year in Review
Recorded: 2004 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 19 min
Themes: ambition, new year, goal setting, spiritual growth, freedom, passion, relationships, holy spirit, feeling stuck, starting fresh, struggling with comparison, people pleaser, young adult, new believer, facing hardship, seeking direction
Scripture: 2 Timothy 1:1-5, Acts 20:17-38, 1 Corinthians 7, 2 Timothy 2:4, Romans 9:1-3, Philippians 1:9-10, Ephesians 3:14-19
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, pneumatology, holy spirit dependence, biblical ambition, spiritual vitality, scripture application, christian purpose
Full Transcript
A Different Kind of Ambition
What I want to do today is part two of the annual examination we do each year — looking back the first week, asking what kind of year 2003 was, and now looking forward to tell you how to make 2004 the greatest year of your life. That is not hype; that is just the truth. Here is what I want you to understand: in spite of circumstances, this can be an extraordinary year and the best year of your life — whether there is a Republican or a Democrat in office, whether the economy goes up or down, whether you lose your job, whether you get sick.
I am not saying those things do not matter. Those things are contributing factors. What I am saying is that you are not a victim of the world and the circumstances around you. It does not matter, in terms of your spiritual condition, what the world is doing. In fact, my experience has been that the more difficult the circumstances, oftentimes that is the best soil for growth. So in spite of circumstances, you can have an extraordinary year.
The word we use each year is ambition. There is a normal, worldly approach to ambition. Years ago, a bestselling author wrote a book titled *Ambitious Men: Their Drives, Dreams, and Delusions*, and in it he makes the point that ambition is highly thought of by society — that something has shifted which was not present for many years. If you are not ambitious, the world tends to think of you as deficient. Ambition needs to be a character trait that people see, point out, and observe in your life.
That raises the question: what does it mean to be ambitious? What this author did was put together video vignettes, show them to groups of people, and then ask who in what they saw was ambitious and what the character traits were. He found five of them. Number one, a desire for more — and he tells us what "more" means: money, fame, prestige, and power. Second, an emphasis on quantity. Third, a shortage of time — there was an urgency, a hurriedness, an "I'm late for a very important date, have your people call my people" kind of energy. Fourth, an absence of satisfaction — interestingly, if someone in the vignettes said "when I make a million dollars I am going to retire," observers said that person was more goal-oriented than ambitious. And fifth, an obsession with self.
Now, when we tell you to be ambitious, those are not the character traits we are looking at. But this is a great teaching moment to help you understand the world around you. Put together what we just discussed: the world says if you are not ambitious you are deficient, and to be ambitious you must have a desire for more, an emphasis on quantity, a shortage of time, an absence of satisfaction, and an obsession with self. It should not be hard to understand why the world and the people in it are so frustrated.
The Race with No Finish Line
Some of you right now have a stomach in a knot, already thinking about sitting out on the freeway tomorrow morning at 6:47, stuck, because you have bought into this. The most telling of those five characteristics, to me, is the fourth one, because it summarizes all the others: there is no satisfaction. There is no end. It is a race with no finish line. It is a game with no clock, no final buzzer — you just keep playing and playing and playing. There is a total absence of satisfaction.
It is as though you are running a race, you see the finish line, but it is on casters and they just keep rolling it away from you. That is what the world says. There is never enough. If the object is to get more, then you never have enough. If the object is quantity, then you never have enough. If time is always running out, then there is never time to think, never time to read, never time to be at home.
I love to watch the men who retire from Congress or step down from some position and say, "I am doing this to spend more time with my family." And then you read what they are actually doing — leaving the house at six in the morning, getting home at six, eight, nine at night. There is real tension there. I do not know that a father should take a job like that; it is something to genuinely think about.
So when I say to you, be ambitious, I am not talking about any of that. Let me give you a fresh approach to ambition. We are going to walk through four or five objectives.
The First Objective: Improve Human Relationships
Here is the first one. This is a great year to improve human relationships. For many years I have suggested that the apostle Paul needs a makeover — that he needs a public relations firm, an image consultant. When I say "Paul," people typically picture someone stoic, almost robotic, dogmatic, certainly not a warm person. And yet when I look at 2 Timothy chapter one, the first five verses, I see a man who is extremely sensitive, warm, and tender.
Here is what he says: *"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to Timothy, my dear son."* If we were just reading along without any background, we might say that is kind of interesting — he loves his child. But what is helpful here is to understand that Timothy is not Paul's physical son. They do not share a chain of DNA. Timothy is his son in the Lord. What they share is the fact that they are both indwelt
Paul's Wish for Timothy
Most Christian wishes for children and pagan wishes are about the same. "I hope they don't get hurt. I hope they do pretty well. I hope they don't get sick. I hope they get a good job. I hope they find a nice guy or gal and get married and settle down." When I talk to people about how their kids are doing, I often hear, "Oh, my daughter's doing great. She's not on drugs. She's not pregnant." I'm sensing the bar might be a little low here. We need to raise it up just a tad, because there is a little more to it than that.
We know that when the pressure is on and we have to give a spiritual answer, we will give it. But when the pressure is off and we just start talking about how the kids are doing, what they are doing, what we want to see them doing, it always comes back to the same things the world cares about.
I was at my desk one day years ago at Coal Banker, and a secretary who was getting married had a card going around for everyone to sign. I never know what to write in those cards. The woman ahead of me took the card and started writing, and I had no idea what she was putting down. When she handed it back, I looked, and the minute I read it I knew I had an illustration. She had written: "On this special day, I wish you all the world has to offer." What a strange wish. Floods, earthquakes, pestilence, heartaches, terrorists, anthrax, sickness, famine, pain, suffering. Strange, isn't it? Of course you know what she meant — no problems, life is good, everything goes all right, never any heartache.
Paul has this opportunity to make a wish for his son Timothy, and he does not wish him all the world has to offer. He wishes him all that God has to offer. You see it right there: "To Timothy, my dear son, I wish you grace and mercy and peace."
The World's Imitation vs. God's Reality
This is not the peace that comes from getting everything you want — from living in a gated community where nobody can get in or out, from having all the clothes you want, from making a hole in one. The world always has a knockoff. The world always has an imitation. The world says you will have peace, all you need is love, all you need is joy — just do this, get this, have this. But they have already told you that settling for that would be wrong, because to be ambitious means having a desire for more. So if you try to find these things in the world, you will never find them. They tell you coming in that you are never going to get it, yet you are supposed to spend your whole life working toward it. It is a funny game.
Paul says: I wish you the grace of God — unmerited favor. I wish you the mercy of God — not judgment, though you deserve it, but forgiveness. I wish you peace — not the absence of turmoil, but the presence of God in your life. That is so meaningful.
Paul's Constant Prayer for Timothy
Paul goes on to say: "I thank God, whom I serve as my forefathers did with a clear conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers." He is telling Timothy, "I am praying for you all the time."
He then speaks of recalling Timothy's tears. Please open your Bibles to Acts chapter 20. We do not know that this is the specific incident Paul has in mind, though it is certainly a strong candidate. In Acts chapter 20, verse 17, Paul is saying goodbye to what I would argue is his favorite church — or certainly one of the churches he loves most. He is saying goodbye to the church at Ephesus, and he has called together its leadership team. Understand the setting: the Apostle Paul is saying farewell to the church he loves, and he has gathered that church's leaders around him. One of those men would have been Timothy.
Paul begins to reflect on his time with them — his service to them, the humility with which he encountered trials. Look at verse 20: "I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, teaching you publicly." He emphasizes the same point again in verse 27: "I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God."
Guarding the Flock from Wolves Within
Paul then says: "Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd, which God purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you." And in verse 30: "From among your own will arise men speaking perverse things."
This is the very same idea we examined last week — that there will be challenges to the church, often from within the church, from the pulpit. Paul is saying: we guard this truth in love. Someone said to me, "I don't understand why you and East Valley Bible Church are not involved in more ecumenical moves. I don't know why you don't do this." And I said, "Because the people who are in there don't believe this" —
Doctrine and Difficult Duty
There are those who say, "We don't believe this, we don't believe this, and we don't believe this — that's why we're not in there." And here is what one man said to me, and this ought to tell you how wrong his thinking is: "We need to reach a point in the church where doctrine is no longer an issue." He said we're getting close to it. I told him, "You're going to get your wish if you hang on, because that's the way we're headed."
Paul does not say that. He does not say, "Can't you get along? Can't we all just get along?" Paul says, "I did not shrink." What he is telling you is that this is hard duty. He is saying, "I never shrank from teaching you the whole counsel of God, and I want you to watch out, because men are going to come who are not going to want to do this, because it is hard, and it is painful, and it is costly."
Paul's Tears and Timothy's Faith
After Paul shares with the Ephesian elders, verse 36 tells us he knelt down and prayed with them, and they began to weep aloud. This may be the very incident he is recalling in verse four when he mentions Timothy's tears. They wept aloud and embraced Paul. Do you see a stoic, dogmatic man here? I do not. They wept especially over the word he had spoken — that they would not see him anymore.
Paul says, "I recall your tears. I long to see you, because seeing you is going to fill me with joy." And then he says, "I have been reminded of the sincere faith that was first lived in your grandmother, and then your mother, and now in you, Timothy."
Where Are the Men?
Now I want to make one point before we move on. There is something missing in verse five. Where is the father? Where are the men? One of the things I appreciate about this church is that the men lead — not all of them, but leadership has not been abdicated to women.
If you watched certain Christian television fifteen years ago, I would have sat there and said, "This is nuts. Nobody is going to buy this." And now it is mainstream. What you see more and more is women teachers, women leading, women everywhere. You look at the congregation in many of these settings and there are no men anywhere — not just at the pulpit, but at every level.
The women who work with the three-year-olds will tell you that when a man is in the room, everything changes with those children. God is not going to judge your wife for how your children are handled, trained, and educated. He is going to judge you. That is your responsibility. That is your job.
So often in the Christian community, it is the wife who is blazing the trail, setting the benchmark, making the calls, asking what she can do. I get this question often: "How can I get my husband to lead?" People do not usually like the answer, because it is one answer, it is a simple answer. If you want it to be easy for him to lead — follow him. Now we are at the real problem: you do not like where he is taking you. That is not your business. He is leading. Hop on board.
The Power of One-on-One Relationship
The emphasis I want to make in these five verses is on the idea of human relationship, and you see this clearly in Paul's life. What is present here is one intimate relationship — his relationship with Timothy. I need to be clear: I am not speaking on behalf of the elders or the staff, and I am not necessarily speaking about this church specifically. I am making an observation.
I believe we have put far too much emphasis on the idea of accountability. Small groups have become accountability groups where we sit around holding one another accountable. I think it is naive to believe that a person will sit down in a room with eight, nine, or ten people and share the most intimate things of their heart. I can tell you it is not going to happen if I am in the group.
There is the corporate gathering, and at each level there can be a bit more intimacy, but the intimacy I am talking about is one-on-one. That is where true intimacy lives.
A Word of Caution
Here are a couple of principles to keep in mind. Men with men, women with women. You must be very careful, because when you share thoughts and experiences that are deeply intimate, a bond is forged between the two of you. If that bond forms between a man and a woman, it is not unusual for it to become a physical bond.
I will have women tell me all the time, "My best friend is Bob. I can just talk to Bob, and it is so meaningful." And I will ask, "How does Bob feel?" "Oh, Bob feels the same way. In fact, Bob told me he wants to share these things with others, but he's afraid the guys would laugh at him. And even he and his wife have kind of grown apart — she doesn't really understand him — so I'm really the only person he can share with."
Someone get the hotel room now. That line is in the water and something is on the hook. Are there exceptions? Perhaps. But you are playing with fire.
The Need for a True Confidant
Having said all of that, I am saying you need these kinds of relationships. A man came to me — I will not say who he is because it would be embarrassing, and he is not from this church — but he is a recognizable figure...
Maintaining Friendships
Paul does four things in this passage to maintain friendships. The first is there in verse three: he prays for people. "Night and day, I constantly remember you in my prayers." He is praying for them over and over again.
We had a lady at the church who was very close with her best friend, and the friend moved away. I saw her a few months later and asked if it was hard without her. She said it was very hard, but then she said, "We're closer now than we've ever been." How can that be? "We're praying for each other every day."
The second thing Paul does is write to them. This is where you see what you have on your lap. This is tricky in our day and age because we have email, and you have to be careful with it. The problem with email is very simple: it is person to person, but it is not face to face. You will type things that you would never write out by hand.
There are companies, according to the Wall Street Journal, that have prohibited using email within the office except to communicate information. I've discovered that people will write things in email that they would never say to your face, and they would never take the time to write it out longhand. I got an email about a year ago, and I'm sitting there reading it, saying, "This is brutal — who is this person?" I went into the church database and couldn't find him.
Somebody came in and asked how I was doing, and I laid out this character trait that the email described and asked what they thought. They said, "No, I don't think you're that — why do you ask?" I read it to them, and they said, "That's brutal. How can somebody write that?" I'll tell you how — I've done it myself. I've written a lot of emails that I've never pushed send on, because I go back and read them after letting them sit a day or two, and I say, "I would never say that to the guy, so why would I write it?"
What happens is you start typing, and it's almost therapeutic. You're moving along, carried away, one thought leads to the next, and then you hit send. You have to be careful with email. This week I received two handwritten notes, and I'll always take a handwritten note, read it, set it down, come back, and read it again. There is something about holding it. You need to write.
Four Practices Paul Uses
The two other things Paul does are visiting eye to eye and networking. In one of his letters he says he is going to send a man named Timothy, and that he has no one else like Timothy. I do that kind of thing regularly. Just this past week I got a call from Portland. A father said his daughter was here and her boyfriend had just become a believer — could I help get him connected? I told him I wouldn't do anything unless the young man contacted me himself, but if he did, I'd put him in touch with the right people. He came up after the last service and said, "Here I am — what do I do, where do I go?" No problem. That is networking.
You are going to have a great year if you improve your relationships. Here is the second major area: increasing freedom in your life.
Freedom Bought at a Price
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7, "You were bought at a price." I will never fully know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross. I will never be able to get my arms fully around it.
I know many of you are reading about the new Mel Gibson film, and I hear it is extremely graphic. I never saw Braveheart, The Patriot, or Saving Private Ryan — that kind of film is simply not my preference. We actually considered booking a theater for a couple of nights and watching it together as a church, but we decided against it for two reasons. First, however much people are saying it is good, we still have not seen it ourselves. Second, it will likely be rated R, and some of you would struggle with that.
I know many of you will see it, and when you do, you are going to say you have a deeper understanding of what He paid. You will have a deeper understanding of the physical suffering. But it is not going to introduce you to the full agony of the cross, which was the moment when He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf. You were bought at a price. You were in bondage to sin, and now you are free.
Three Dimensions of Freedom
There are a few dimensions of this freedom worth talking about. You are free from the bondage of sin, which means you can now do good. You are free because your eternal home is now in heaven, not in hell. And you are free to be who God created you to be.
You do not have to be like me, and I do not have to be like you. We do not have to conform to one another. Any time you put a size around something — whether it is a business or a church — and you start to measure things, you easily fall into categories. Our tendency then becomes to look at someone else and ask how they are doing spiritually, and to measure ourselves by that comparison rather than by who God made us to be.
Don't Be Enslaved to Others' Opinions
Everybody is different, even in the body of Christ. Some of you are going to have a passion for knowing, studying, and learning. Some of you will say, "My deal is prayer." Some of you will say, "I need to be with people — with young Christians who are growing." Others will say, "I like to be with pagans, sharing the truth." It doesn't matter. You are free to be the person that God created you to be, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, expressing that in an individual way.
The emphasis here is twofold. You were bought at a price — and you need to contemplate that. You need to think about it constantly. While you're driving along in the car, lying in bed, in a quiet moment, you ought to be thinking about that price that was paid. But the second thing is this: because you were bought at a price and are now free, don't put yourself back into slavery to men.
What could that slavery look like? It could be the slavery of worrying about what other people think. I know people — and it really is a domino effect — who care so deeply about what others think that they spend more money than they have on cars, houses, and clothes just to make an impression. They end up with financial problems, and now they're enslaved to Bank of America as well as to other people. Or it could be booze. It could be power. It could be prestige. It could be any of those things.
The Soldier's Standard
Paul writes in 2 Timothy 2, verse 4: "No soldier in active duty entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier." That is a magnificent verse, and I really challenge you to take some time, process it, and start to work it through.
You get the imagery here. If you are over in Iraq right now, you are not the kind of soldier who gets up in the morning and says, "What should I wear today? These old fatigues feel a little tired — maybe something from the Navy?" What the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines do is take away all of those options. Why? So that you can focus on the duty at hand. You are a soldier in active duty.
You and I are soldiers in active duty. We have one objective: to please and glorify the One who enlisted us. Who is that? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So don't entangle yourselves in the affairs of everyday life.
It is a very important exercise to sit down with a pad of paper and say, "I would do this to glorify the Lord, but —" or "I would do this to serve Him, but —" Whatever comes after that "but" — those are the things you have to get rid of. The natural flow of life is going to act like barnacles catching onto a ship, slowing you down, distracting you, tying you up, and causing you to miss the main objective, which is to serve, please, and glorify the One who enlisted you. You are going to have a magnificent year if you can free yourself from those things. What are they? Again, they are different for everyone.
Intensify Your Passion
Here is the third thing: intensify your passion. Paul says this in Romans 9: "I speak the truth in Christ, I am not lying. My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my own race."
Paul is saying, "I know this cannot happen. I know it is impossible. But if it would work, I would give my salvation away for the sake of my brothers." There is passion. What are you passionate about?
We are not a very passionate people, it seems to me. We have a national anthem, a national bird — the eagle — and a national motto: "In God We Trust." I would suggest we need a national color, a color that captures the spirit, the heart, and the passion of the American people. If we were to go to Home Depot and look through the color swatches, the color that best encapsulates, in my mind, the majority of people in this country would be beige.
Consider this statistic — and you know how you read certain statistics and think, "This means something"? Forty-seven percent of high school seniors said in a survey a couple of years ago that they cannot imagine one thing they would die for. Think about that. That tells you an awful lot about the country you are living in. Basically, one out of two seniors said they would not die for family, for friends, for loved ones, for country, for faith — for nothing. They could not imagine a single thing worth dying for.
If you have a generation that believes there is nothing worth dying for, then as you well know, there is nothing worth living for either. What would be the motto of that generation? Might it not be something like: "Whatever." You parents of teenagers — you know exactly what I mean. You talk to your kid and say, "How are you doing?" "Fine." "What did you do today?" "Nothing." "What's new?" "Nothing." And it drives you nuts. But I will walk across campus and pass a parent coming the other way and hear the same thing: "How are you doing?" "Fine." "What's new?" "Nothing." They learned it from you.
Someone has said — and this is a great statement — that we do not even sin with vigor anymore. We are apathetic even in our sin.
Igniting Genuine Passion
John Wesley was driving the church establishment crazy. All the people were coming out to hear him preach, standing in a field in the rain, and the religious leaders wanted to know his secret. They went to him and asked: What is it? What's the key? How do you hold a crowd? Hermeneutics? Homiletics? PowerPoint? Video clips? Theatrics? Wesley said, "Light yourself on fire, because everybody loves to watch somebody burn."
And it has to be genuine. Passion is not simply a matter of personality or style. Some people express themselves with great energy, and others are more laid back. Passion is when something grips your heart and just oozes out of you. For some people that will look one way, and for others it simply won't be real if they try to manufacture it. Here is what it really comes down to: it is you being you, and something captures your heart and sets you upside down.
Passion and the Culture Around You
The president spoke the other night for fifty-five minutes — a Clinton-esque length — about a whole range of issues, but left some real important things out. It was the first presidential State of the Union address by a Republican president since 1980 that did not mention abortion. What happened is fairly clear: the political calculation was made that abortion would divide people, so a different moral issue was chosen to rally the base — same-sex marriage, with thirty-seven states already moving toward constitutional amendments on that question.
The irony is that this same week marks the thirty-first anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and 1.2 million babies will be killed this year. Maybe that is your passion. I really believe there is something brewing on this issue. More high school freshmen now say they are pro-life than pro-choice.
College students, by their nature, are contrarian — whatever you are for, they are against, and whatever you are against, they are for. That is simply the way God made young people. They are also drawn to a noble cause, and this cause is bigger than saving a whale. This is a human being. What has happened is that we can now go into the womb and, before a mother even knows she is a mother, begin to see the formation of a baby at two weeks. I think that is powerful evidence. Eighty percent of the American public says they are against abortion for purposes of birth control, and yet most abortions happen for reasons of convenience.
Finding Your Own Passion
Maybe abortion is not your passion, and that is all right. Someone stopped me this week — a woman — and said that a year ago I had told her she needed a passion. She laid out what she had found, and she was completely on fire for it. She asked if I could help her, and I had to be honest: my plate is full, there are a thousand things out there, and I cannot be for all of them. What I could do was connect her with people who might be able to help move things forward. But the point stands — you need a passion.
Expanding Your Perspective
Here is the fourth thing: expand your perspective. Paul writes this prayer: "that your love may abound more and more in the knowledge and depth of insight, so you may be able to discern what is best and pure and blameless until the day of Christ." He is talking about expansion — expanding our spiritual understanding of God and who He is, and what flows from that insight.
But I want to say it is bigger than just spiritual understanding. It also means understanding the world and culture you are actually living in. If we were sending you as a missionary to Indonesia, the first thing we would say is that you need to understand the culture and how people think. The same is true right here. This is a staggering statistic: the nation with the most unconverted people is probably India, China is second, and third is the United States. Unbelieving people are all around you, and you need to understand the culture they live in.
Overcoming the Fear of What You Don't Understand
Eleven years ago, I predicted that the computer was a fad. Not all the data is in, but it is starting to look like I may have been wrong. Here is how that happened: I knew it probably was not a fad, but it intimidated me. I did not understand it, it scared me, and I did not think I could program one. It was like saying, if I never acknowledge the flu, I will never get sick. The most valuable tool I now have in preparing a sermon is the computer.
I was watching Milton Friedman the other night, and he said he had just read a book that would change the world. There is a Christian side of me that says only one book will change the world — the Bible — but I still wanted to know what Friedman was referring to. I went to the bookstore, got the book, read ten pages, and did not understand a single thing the Peruvian economist who wrote it was saying. I bought it anyway. By pages 120 to 140, I said, "Wow, that is incredible." I then read an article —
Expand Your Perspective
You have to understand the world you are in. You have to expand your perspective. We tend to pass around the same books, reading them all over again by the same authors, saying the same things — and agreeing because those authors are simply confirming what we already believe. Every book we read is essentially the same book.
When is the last time you read a book by a twenty-five-year-old? The objection is that they do not have any life experience, that they do not have anything to say. But they can tell you what the culture is thinking. When is the last time you read a book that did not exactly line up dogmatically with everything you already believe? You have to expand your perspective.
Strengthened by the Holy Spirit
When you look at this list — improve relationships, increase freedom, intensify passion, expand perspective — it can feel overwhelming. "I cannot do it." And that is actually the final point, because you are strengthened by the Holy Spirit.
Paul writes this in Ephesians 3:
> "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ — to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
You have a power in you that is greater than the power of any earthly authority. Consider what money and government can accomplish: certain school districts in New York spend $12,000 a year to educate a child. You could spend $50,000 and produce a Rhodes Scholar. But even then, what has not changed? The heart. The Holy Spirit changes the heart, and that is real power.
What the Holy Spirit Produces
In conversations about faith, people sometimes say they do not want to become a Christian because of everything they would have to give up. The honest answer is that yes, there are things you give up — guilt, remorse, anxiety, discouragement, depression, fear, loneliness, confusion, and uncertainty. Those things go. And in exchange, you receive love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. That is entirely an act of the Holy Spirit. It has nothing to do with human effort. It is all an act of God working in your life.
Putting It Into Practice
You can have an extraordinary year as you expand your perspective, intensify your passion, develop relationships, and free yourself from the things that hold you back. To put some concrete shape around it: develop a key relationship, remove a specific constraint, feed a passion, and read — five books, ten books, however many — the point is that you are taking in information and staying aligned with your passion and your love for Christ.
At the end of 2004, you will be able to say it was the best year of your life — and this is the key — regardless of the circumstances. You cannot control the circumstances, but you can control these things.
All of these notes will be on the website. Take them, condense them, and put them somewhere visible so you can work through them over the course of the year, because next year we will go through this same exercise together. And for those who are eager to get back to the chapter-by-chapter, verse-by-verse teaching — that is how we live here, and we will be back in Luke chapter one, verse fifty-nine next week as we continue our study in the life of Christ.
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*Father, thank You for the men, the women, and the students who are here. We know there are people who are hurting, and we know that we can come to You — that You care for us and love us. As we look forward to this new year, there is an opportunity to start fresh and establish a new approach. Help us improve relationships, increase freedom and passion, and expand our perspective. What we are saying, in short, is this: let our lives count for You. We pray that in Jesus' name, amen.*
We are in part eight of our nine-part series, "How to Make 2004 Your Best Year Ever." I want to remind you where we have been and then move forward into what God has for us today.
We have been walking through a set of principles that, when applied, genuinely have the power to transform the trajectory of your life. Not because they are clever human ideas, but because they are rooted in the Word of God. When you align your life with what God has already said, you position yourself to receive everything He has prepared for you.
Reviewing the Foundation
We have established that your best year ever is not an accident. It is the result of intentional, faith-filled decisions made in partnership with God. Every principle we have covered has pointed us back to that central truth: God wants to bless you, and He has given you both the promise and the responsibility.
We have talked about the importance of vision — knowing where you are going. A life without vision drifts. Proverbs tells us that where there is no vision, the people perish. You cannot hit a target you have never set.
We have also talked about the power of your words, the importance of faith, and the necessity of surrounding yourself with the right people. All of these things work together. None of them stands alone.
The Role of Commitment
Today I want to focus on something that ties all of these principles together, and that is commitment. Commitment is the bridge between intention and result. A lot of people have wonderful intentions. They want to grow. They want to change. They want to do better. But intention without commitment produces nothing.
Think about the hymn we just sang: "Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee." That is a prayer of commitment. It is not a casual request. It is a declaration that everything — your hands, your feet, your voice, your silver and your gold, your intellect — belongs to God. That is the kind of whole-life surrender that makes transformation possible.
Commitment is not a feeling. Feelings will betray you. There will be mornings when you do not feel committed, when you do not feel motivated, when you do not feel like pressing forward. Commitment carries you through those mornings.
What Commitment Looks Like in Practice
Commitment means you have made a decision before the difficulty arrives. It means that when the opposition comes — and it will come — you have already settled in your heart what you are going to do. You are not negotiating with the enemy in the middle of the battle. The battle was already won in the place of decision.
The Apostle Paul understood this. He wrote in Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." That is not a verse about feelings. That is a verse about settled conviction. Paul had committed himself to the mission regardless of the circumstances, and that commitment gave him access to supernatural strength.
We see this same principle in the life of Joshua. When God commissioned him to lead Israel into the Promised Land, He said in Joshua 1:9, "Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest." God was not asking Joshua to feel courageous. He was calling Joshua to act courageous because of the commitment God Himself had made to be with him.
Commitment Requires Sacrifice
Here is what nobody wants to talk about: commitment costs something. The hymn says, "Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold." That is a radical statement. It means there is no portion of your life you are holding back from God. Partial commitment produces partial results. You cannot give God forty percent of your life and expect one hundred percent of His blessing.
Sacrifice is not punishment. Sacrifice is the price of purpose. Every person in Scripture who walked in great purpose paid a great price. Abraham left his homeland. Moses left the palace. Paul left his religious pedigree and counted it all as loss. They did not lose anything worth keeping, but they had to release it to find out.
The question commitment forces you to answer is this: what are you willing to give up to gain what God has for you? Are you willing to give up comfort? Are you willing to give up convenience? Are you willing to give up the approval of people who do not share your vision?
Guarding Your Commitment
Once you have made a commitment, you have to guard it. The enemy does not attack your commitment all at once. He erodes it slowly, through distraction, discouragement, and delay. He introduces small compromises, small excuses, small detours, and before long you have wandered far from the place where you started.
This is why the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 12:1, "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." Notice the language: lay aside every weight. A weight is not necessarily a sin. A weight is anything that slows you down. It could be a relationship, a habit, a mindset, a distraction. Commitment requires you to be ruthless about what you allow to occupy your time and your attention.
You also guard your commitment by staying connected to the source. Jesus said in John 15:5, "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing." Your commitment to your goals and your vision must be rooted in your commitment to Christ. When He is the foundation, the storms cannot topple what you are building.
Commitment and Community
I want to say something about the role that community plays in sustaining your commitment. God did not design you to do this alone. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says, "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."
When your commitment wavers — and there will be days when it does — you need people around you who will speak the truth to you, who will remind you of what God said, who will stand with you when you cannot stand on your own. That is the church. That is why we gather. We are not just here to sing songs and hear a message. We are here to strengthen one another's commitment to the purposes of God.
Do not isolate yourself in this season. Do not let pride or independence cut you off from the people God has placed in your life to help you finish what you started.
Making 2004 the Year You Follow Through
We are in part eight of nine. That means we are close to the end of this series, but we are not done yet. And I want to challenge you today not to treat this as just another sermon in a series. I want you to treat this as a moment of decision.
Every year, people start with great intentions and finish with great regrets. The gap between intention and outcome is always filled or emptied by commitment. This year can be different, but it will only be different if you make the decision today that you are going to follow through — not when it is convenient, not when you feel like it, but consistently, persistently, faithfully.
God is not looking for perfect people. He is looking for committed people. He can work with someone who stumbles and gets back up. He cannot do much with someone who is half-hearted. James 1:8 tells us that "a double minded man is unstable in all his ways." You cannot walk in the blessings of God while you are constantly reconsidering your commitment to Him.
Closing
So let me ask you directly: what commitment do you need to make or renew today? What is God asking you to lay down, to pick up, or to press through? Do not leave this place the same way you came in. Let this be the day that you say, like the hymn, "Here am I, all of me. Take my life. It's all for You."
That is the prayer of someone who is ready for their best year ever — not because everything will be easy, but because they have put everything in the hands of the One who makes all things possible.