What I Learned on My Summer Vacation Part 1 (2004)

Returning from summer vacation, Tom Shrader weaves together stories from travel, books, and chance encounters to make a sustained case that God's Word functions like an instrument panel for a pilot flying through clouds — when feelings and instincts mislead, Scripture provides the trustworthy reference point. Drawing on Proverbs 1, Proverbs 14:12, Isaiah 55, and Romans 1, he urges the congregation to build their lives on what they know from the Word rather than what they feel in the moment. He closes with a series of practical observations about mortality, purpose, and how to stay young in spirit, pointing toward the need to live intentionally and love openly in light of the brevity of life.

“There's a way that seems right to men but in its end, it's a way to death.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

Recorded: 2004 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 50 min

Themes: bible study, trust, feelings vs truth, purpose, mortality, wisdom, scripture, intentional living, feeling lost, questioning faith, middle age, new believer, searching for purpose, returning to church, facing mortality, doubting emotions

Scripture: Proverbs 1:1-6, Proverbs 14:12, Isaiah 55:8-9, Romans 1:20, Romans 1:22, Romans 1:32, Romans 15:32, Philippians 3:7-8, Philippians 3:13-14, Ecclesiastes 3:4

Theological Themes: biblical authority, sola scriptura, revelation, proverbial wisdom, general revelation, sanctification, hermeneutics, living by the word

Full Transcript

Introduction

Tonight we begin "What I Learned on My Summer Vacation," Part One. Yes, there is more to come — Part Two will follow next week, and then we'll return to studying the life of Christ. If you're new to the church and came here because of solid, chapter-by-chapter, verse-by-verse Bible teaching, you don't need to leave. This is something we do annually, and what I hope you'll see is that the things we look at will drive us back to the Scriptures. For the past four or five weeks, what I read, heard, experienced, and observed becomes the text for tonight.

Summer Travel

How was the vacation? It was excellent. Tyler asked me yesterday what the best day was, and I honestly couldn't pick one. As for where we went — I literally ate my way through North America. I have been doing nothing but eating since August 1st. At the music event the other night I mentioned that I have exactly one pair of pants I can wear on Sunday, and you may be seeing these black pants for about a month, because I cannot get into anything else.

We started in Alaska as part of a cruise, and we took some people from the church along for a great time. Next year we're doing New England — maybe you'd like to join us. Everyone talks about the food on a cruise. The food is fine, there's a lot of it, but what really summarizes the whole experience is this: on the third day I walked up to the grill, a little Indonesian fellow was working it, our eyes met, and he said, "Double cheeseburger, extra cheese." That is how I was known to 1,900 people.

We were also up in Flagstaff and had a terrific time there, and we just spent a week at Cannon Beach. Gentlemen — ladies, you need not listen to this — if you want a romantic getaway, don't run over to San Diego with everyone else. Fly to Portland, drive ninety minutes to the coast, go up on a Thursday afternoon, spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and come back Monday afternoon. You will feel like you've been gone two weeks. It is magnificent, and it is very romantic.

What did we do? We relaxed, we ate, we read, we had fun, we talked, and we enjoyed some family time with friends. Am I rested? Yes. Am I ready to go? No is the honest answer — but I am glad to be here, and we've had a great day.

Books and Reading

One of the things I did on vacation was read — a lot, for me. I'm a slow reader, so it's a little cumbersome, but I got through two or three novels, a large number of magazines and periodicals, and several books. I read a book written by a woman about her sister, with a foreword by Katie Couric — entirely a woman's book, but I read it cover to cover, it's all dog-eared, and I learned some things I'll probably pull out for next week. I read a book on the Panama Canal, which was fascinating.

I also read a book called *The Art of Travel*, which may sound a little odd, but it is really good. The author opens with this observation: when you plan a trip, you look at the brochure, you hold your airplane ticket and hotel reservation, but you never think about anything in between — the cab ride, the aggravation, the lines, the smells, all that goes with it. He then describes arriving on a magnificent tropical island and noticing that his ability to take it all in has been undermined. He writes: "My awareness of them has been weakened by a number of other unrelated developments. I have a sore throat that I developed during the flight. I'm worried over

Introduction: Bringing Yourself Along

Having not informed a colleague that I would be away, I have a pressure across both temples and a rising need to go to the bathroom. And here is the line: I had a momentous, and until then overlooked, fact that was making itself apparent. I had inadvertently brought with me myself to the island. That was a pretty interesting account.

Life 2.0: The Economic Shift

Here is the book — I am going to put the cover up on the screen for you — *Life 2.0*. I spent some time on this. I found it in the bookstore when we were in Flagstaff. I was in Barnes and Noble every day for an hour or two, reading on their dime and hanging out. It is by the publisher of Forbes magazine, and I would say it is pretty interesting reading.

Here is what this author starts with — a variety of things coming together. He starts with this fact: a third of your jobs — he is talking about white collar jobs now, not manufacturing jobs — are going overseas. They are gone. It is not just calling a phone and asking for information; we know those service centers are gone. He is talking about a hospital in Massachusetts that basically moved its radiology department overseas, saving themselves millions of dollars. They take the MRIs and email them to India, where the techs read them, working for a fraction of what you and I would work for.

I am not making a judgment on that. To me it is good — it is free market, that is life, that is how you figure it out. But he is saying this has huge ramifications for us, for you, for a nation. There are huge ramifications for California specifically. He is saying that thing is just going to implode. If you want to see property values plummet, watch what happens over there.

He was a high school student in Bismarck, North Dakota, and he uses these numbers to prove the point: if a $100,000 house in Bismarck were available in Palo Alto, it would have cost $200,000 at that time. That same $100,000 house in Bismarck today would cost $1.3 million in Palo Alto. As the jobs go overseas and things move out, all of a sudden you are in Silicon Valley and you are not going to start a company there because the expenses are too high — you have to pay people too much to live in those houses. What is happening, then, is an exodus from New York and California to places like Des Moines, Fargo, and Bismarck.

Where People Are Moving

He divides the cities you might want to live in into five or six categories. One of them he calls family-friendly cities — port-swing communities. These are cities that are starting to take off: Ashland, Oregon; Bismarck; Boise; Des Moines; Bowling Green; Columbia, Missouri; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Lincoln, Nebraska. Of course, you would have to give up college football if you moved there.

He also talks about what he calls best small towns. The first one he lists is Bisbee, Arizona — and by the way, things are starting to explode down in Bisbee, interestingly enough. He also lists Douglas, Georgia; French Lick, Indiana; Grants Pass, Oregon; McCall, Idaho; and Oxford, Mississippi.

Then he talks about IQ campuses — emerging centers around biotech and infotech. What he is saying is that you are going to see cities explode that have universities with high levels of focus in science and computers. These are exactly the cities you would think of: Ann Arbor, Boulder, Athens, Georgia; Iowa City, Lawrence, Kansas; State College; Madison; Missoula; and Austin.

Under fast-growing cities, the only two in Arizona he lists are Tucson and Yuma. He then goes on to discuss a great deal more. What he did was write all of this up and report on it in Forbes, and he began receiving emails from people who had actually done it — major executives from Wall Street and Silicon Valley who had sold everything and moved to places like Green Bay. He got his pilot's license, flew around and visited them, and this book is the result.

Flying Without a Horizon

Now, that is a long way to get to this point. He is talking about learning to fly, and he writes this:

"Flying a small plane is said to be seven times more dangerous than driving a car, forty times more dangerous than hopping on a commercial airliner. The risk is equal to driving a motorcycle. Mechanical problems with the airplane itself account for a small percentage of accidents. The rest can be chalked up to human error — usually pilot error. Most fatal errors are caused by flying into clouds or evening haze without a proper understanding of instrument flying. This is how John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and his sister-in-law met their death on July 19, 1999, beginning his descent from 5,500 feet into Martha's Vineyard in his new Piper Saratoga. Kennedy lost the horizon in the evening."

Now listen closely. This is frighteningly easy to do. Lacking an obvious reference point such as a horizon to check whether the airplane's wings are level, the average non-instrument rated pilot will lose control of his airplane in 45 seconds. Flying by gauges is safer, but it is counterintuitive.

He knows this because one day while flying with an instructor through clouds overlying Los Angeles, he became convinced they were nose down and losing altitude. Every instinct screamed at him to pull the yoke back — but the gauges told another story. They were flying perfectly straight, perfectly level. Had he raised the nose as every cell in his brain implored him to do, he would have slowed the plane's airspeed, perhaps to a point of —

Navigating by Instruments

Now, as I'm reading that, I can see the connection coming pretty quickly. I'm reading through the Old and New Testament in The Message, the paraphrase from Eugene Peterson. As God orchestrated it, I happen to be at Proverbs chapter 1, verses 1 through 6. Here's how Peterson paraphrases those verses:

"These are the wise sayings of Solomon, David's son, Israel's king, written down so we'll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it's going. A manual for living, for learning what's right and just and fair. To teach the inexperienced the ropes and to give our young people a grasp on reality. There's something here also for seasoned men and women. Still a thing or two for the experienced to learn. Fresh wisdom to probe and penetrate the rhymes and reasons of wise men and women."

So when I'm flying my way through life, there are going to be times when my feelings, my emotions, my senses are going to tell me to do something. But counterintuitively sometimes, just like that pilot in the midst of haze and fog and clouds needs his instruments, I need something I can navigate by. Something I can trust.

See what Solomon says? It's what's going to tell me how to live, how to live right, and how to understand what life means. That's what we need so desperately. Here's the phrase we've been using: what you know trumps what you feel, and what you know flows from this Word.

What Seems Right

A little bit later, Solomon writes these words in Proverbs 14:12: "There's a way that seems right to men but in its end, it's a way to death." Isaiah writes this — the Lord speaks and He says, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways. For as high as the heavens are than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts."

Just like that pilot who says every cell in his brain tells him he's going down, but the one thing he can trust are the instruments telling him what's right — in your life, there are going to be times when your senses scream to do something, and this Word is what you need.

A Christian Worldview

Part of what I like doing with "What I Learned on My Summer Vacation" is to help us look at a Christian worldview — that is, to look at the world around us from God's perspective, the perspective we get in the written Word.

I meet with a guy every time I'm in Oregon. I met him walking down the beach on the Fourth of July. He's a terrific guy, a real thinker. Every time we're up there, we get together, have our coffee, and always go to the same place in the same booth. This time, he's on his way to Scotland for three months — going over just to think and to write. His daughter is going to be in school in Edinburgh, and it's a great time for him to go and think and write.

He's working on a book that explains our life and then maps out counter parallel universes. I asked him how the book was coming. He started it in 1983. He said, "Well, I'm up to ten books, and I can't really finish the first book until I finish the last book, because the last page of the last book is the first page of the first book." I don't know either. But he is a great guy, and I really enjoy meeting with him.

He said this is his answer to why we are the way we are. And I can explain how we are — it's right here. Sometimes we get to this. Paul talks about it in Romans 1. He says to look at creation, and in creation, Romans 1:20, you see two things about God: His eternal power and His divine nature. You look around and you see them, so you are without excuse.

Professing to Be Wise

I'm about to explain to you NPR and PBS. It's in Romans chapter 1, verse 22: "Professing to be wise, they became fools." Now you can understand it.

Pressure on Summer Vacation

While I'm gone, there's a lot of pressure when you're on summer vacation and coming back — people wanting to know what you're learning. Susan kept asking me, "What are you learning on your summer vacation?" I finally said, "Well, one thing I've learned is that you're thinking about this way more than I am. So leave me alone." But I also talked with Tim Monn while we were gone, and I said I can always do something on kids.

Is God good or what? Here's the cover of Newsweek — you can't all see it, but we'll scan it next week. It's a mom and a kid. The kid has earphones in and they're staring at each other. The headline says, "How to Say No to Your Kids." The premise is that periodically you need to say no to your children. Who would have ever thought that? And they say that if you don't, the kids may be messed up. We know that. We can call it common sense, but it's really God's sense, isn't it? We can begin to understand the world around us as we look through this Word.

Without Television

While I was gone, by the way, two and a half of the five weeks I was away, I did not have television. I did hear, catching a paper every now and then, that there were some stunt men in helicopters trying to snag a capsule that was coming back in case the parachute failed. It was a capsule that —

What We Already Know

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There is the answer. But when we refuse that, when we push it away, Paul says at some point, fine, go ahead. And man spirals down. He reaches the point where he is immersed in his sin.

He hates God. Romans 1:32: "and although they know the ordinance of God, they practice, those who practice such things are worthy of death, and they not only do the same, they give hearty approval to those who have practiced around them." They are saying to those around them, come on, do this too. What I learned on my summer vacation is what I already knew when I left, and what we talk about almost every week: we need a moral compass and a true north, and we find it in God's Word. And it is not just about what we read, but about what we hear and observe.

Johnny Ray Watson and the Road to Portland

On Labor Day we were at Cannon Beach. How many of you remember, or have heard of, Johnny Ray Watson? I was teaching a couple of times a day, and they had John in to do the music, so it was great. I had not seen Johnny in a long time, and it made me think we need to find an excuse to have him back.

John needed to get to the airport in Portland. The camp's program director, who has become a good friend of Susan's, and Susan were going to take him. They asked if I wanted to go, and I said I was not interested at all — I was going to walk the beach. The drive to Portland is about ninety minutes, and roughly twenty miles of it is two-lane road before you reach the highway. As they were getting ready to leave, we heard there had been a crash on that highway — there had been one the day before as well — but they thought it might just be a delay, so they took off.

A Walk on the Beach

I walked down the beach, and it was magnificent. It was perfect shorts, flip-flops, long-sleeve t-shirt weather. You did not need anything more or anything less, maybe just a hat to keep the sun off your head.

I walked and walked along that seven-mile flat beach, and finally I said to myself, I have to turn around. I had not talked to anyone in a while, and I needed to talk to somebody. There was a little girl nearby, about three years old, with the reddest, thickest, curliest hair I had ever seen and very light skin. She was so cute, but all I could think was that she was probably somebody's handful. Standing nearby was a woman, and I asked if the little girl was her daughter.

She said no, and explained the child was with their group somehow. She pointed up the hill and said that was her son up there with his dad, who was about two years old. I asked where they were from, and she said they were from over the hill and had just come over to the beach for the day.

Two Girls and a Car Wreck

As I talked with her, she looked dazed, like she was thinking about something else entirely. I asked how the trip over had been, and she said it was weird. When I asked why, she told me that as they were driving over, they came upon a car wreck, and she was the first person on the scene.

In the car were two girls. She guessed they were seniors in high school, maybe college age. We found out the next day they were both eighteen. When she arrived, they were both dead. They had been coming down the hill too fast — the way an eighteen-year-old drives — drifted into the other lane, and a man in a delivery truck hit them. The driver of the truck was clearly not at fault; there was nothing he could do, and she said he was just a mess.

She told me she had just been thinking and thinking about it. She said she was a Christian, and she kept thinking about what if those had been her girls, and how they had so much life left to live.

Live Like You're Dying

The next morning we had an alarm clock that could only pick up one station — a country western station. The announcer said the next song had been the number one country western song for the last nine weeks or so, and he played it. It was Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying." I want to read you the first verse and the chorus.

"I was in my early forties with a lot of life before me, and a moment came that stopped me on a dime. I spent most of the next days looking at x-rays, talking about the options, talking about sweet time. I asked him when it sank in that this might really be the real end — how does it hit you when you get that kind of news? Man, what do you do?" And then the chorus: "I went skydiving, and Rocky Mountain climbing, and I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu. I loved deeper, I spoke sweeter, I gave forgiveness I'd been denying. And he said, someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying."

When I heard that, I thought, that is what we talk about all the time in here.

The Photographer at Ground Zero

Last night I was watching something on 9-11. They had a photojournalist who was at ground zero, and he was sharing his pictures from that day. He was talking about the experience and about the day unfolding, and he said he realized the moment that tower —

Are You Ready to Die?

When the first tower fell, and that wave—30, 40 stories high—of ashes and dirt and paper and glass came rushing forward, I realized I wasn't ready to die. You can see this coming, can't you? My question to you is: are you ready to die? Are you ready to go? I don't say it to scare you, because most of you are going to live a long time, but are you ready to die?

At this point, you expect me to talk about the gospel, and hopefully you never grow weary of hearing it, and I hope I never grow tired of talking about it. I want to remind you that we're all sinners and separated from God by our sin, and that on our own we're destined to hell, but Jesus came and died so that we could have eternal life. That is a constant message here at East Valley Bible Church, and if you want to talk to somebody about that, there will be someone up at the front of the worship center after the service.

A Booklet Worth Buying

I want to talk about something more specific. Our care ministry put together a booklet you can purchase—I think it's three dollars. If you are the parent of adult children, you ought to go buy this for them, because it covers a lot of things people don't want to talk or think about: powers of attorney, organ donation, who should be contacted when you die, what records you have, who has control of certain information, funeral home details, who you'd like to sing at your funeral. It includes a list of funeral homes and cemeteries, a list of hospice care providers, and books and articles on grieving, along with some important Bible passages. Really helpful information.

After all of that is a section called "My Life and Loves." The idea is that following your death, there will be an opportunity for people to speak about your life, and it would be helpful if they had some information to work from. You can list things like hobbies and interests you enjoyed, organizations and activities that meant a lot to you, the values and qualities for which you'd like to be remembered, and the beliefs and truths you'd like to pass on to your loved ones.

This is really important material. If you're here and you're a young dad without life insurance, you're being foolish. You need to take care of this. You need wills. You need to do all of this. I don't sell any of it and I don't get anything out of saying it—I'm just telling you that you need to do it.

What Do You Want to Be Known For?

I especially appreciate the "My Life and Loves" section because it anticipates that moment when you're lying there gone and we're gathered around trying to figure out something to say about you. It's best if at that moment we don't have to lie too much. But even if your descendants never read what you've written, the exercise is helpful for you personally. What do you want to be known for? What values, what qualities, what beliefs, what truths?

The obvious connection is this: if you want to be known as a good friend, a faithful worker, a compassionate person, then it's fair to ask whether that is the way you're currently living. I think this is a genuinely helpful exercise. I don't care if you're 18 or 108—it will jar you back to reality and help you ask the tough questions.

How We Talk About Getting Old

The last thing I want to share comes from my mother. My mother never sends me things. She never sends articles or cartoons—that's my dad. My dad is always sending me obituaries from back in Davenport, or he'll call and say, "Remember so-and-so?" And I'll say, "No, I don't." He'll say, "Yes, you do." I'll say, "No, I don't." He'll say, "You played Little League with him—you played first base, he played short." And I'll say, "I really don't remember." He'll say, "Well, it doesn't matter anyway," and then he'll tell me the story. My mom never sends me anything, but for some reason she sent me this—actually three or four things—and I thought I'd end with it.

It's about the idea of getting old and how our thoughts change as we age. Even the way we respond to the simple question "How old are you?" changes over time. When I'm around kids on campus I'll sometimes ask them that, and I'll hear something like, "Well, I'm going to be five." I'll say, "When will you be five?" They say, "January." And I say, "So you're four. You may not like it, but you're four." They'll say, "I'm four and a half." It's funny, because at the other end of life it gets that same way. I'll meet people and ask how old they are, and they'll say, "I'm going to be 90." I ask, "How old are you now?" They say, "81." But they love it.

In fact, I heard about a woman who was 104, and they were interviewing her for the paper. They asked her, "What's the best thing about being 104?" She didn't miss a beat. She said, "There's no peer pressure." That's pretty good. I would have liked to have known her when she was 21.

So my mom sends me this piece about aging and how we describe it at different stages of life. You become 21, and you turn 30. Then you're pushing 40. Then you reach 50. You make it to 60. And having become 21, turned 30, pushed 40, reached 50, and made it to 60, you've built up all this speed—so finally, you just hit 70.

Staying Young: Ten Suggestions

I have about 10 suggestions on how to stay young, and that is what I am going to talk about. Now, if you are a junior high or high school student, you are probably thinking, "You have got to be kidding me — I am going to listen to how to stay young." Yes, you really are. You need to listen to this and incorporate it into your life, because this is really smart stuff. I know what you are thinking: you are never going to be old. But you are going to be.

I remember our family car was a blue Plymouth station wagon. There were four boys in that car, and I was the oldest. I was way too cool to be riding around in a blue Fury Plymouth station wagon, and I said, "I will never even have a car with a back seat. I am only going to have a convertible. If we ever have kids, they are going to ride in the trunk, because I am never having a regular car." Well, you will. So listen — all of you — here are 10 things, and we will stop along the way and make comments.

Suggestion One: Throw Out Non-Essential Numbers

Number one: throw out non-essential numbers like age, weight, and height. Do not let the doctor worry about them — that is why you pay them. Remember Satchel Paige, the old pitcher, whom no one ever knew exactly how old he was? Someone would ask him how old he was, and he would always come back with this: "How old would you be if you did not know how old you were?" If you did not have a birth certificate, a driver's license, or anything with a date on it, how old would you be? How old do you think? How old do you act?

I meet some very grouchy, stubborn, old 30-year-olds, and some pretty cool, hip 75-year-olds. I met a couple on vacation. As Providence would have it, we sat down at a table at the conference center and they sat next to us. I talked with them about where they were from — Spokane — and what they were doing. They were part of a church plant. In the early 70s, they had been down in Palo Alto at Ray Steadman's church, Peninsula Bible Church, when God was really doing amazing things and Body Life was being written.

They told me about a church — I think it is called Post Falls, Idaho — a little farming community out in the middle of nowhere with 8,000 people attending. They were planting a church in Spokane and were part of that plant. I asked how it was going, and they said it was going great. I asked if they liked it, and they said, "Not hardly anything about it." They were used to Bible chapter-by-chapter, verse-by-verse expository teaching — that is what Steadman did, that is what their old pastor did. Their new church was seeker-sensitive, had communion every week, and while the messages flowed from Scripture, they were targeted toward unbelievers. They did not like the music. They did not like pretty much anything about it.

I asked why they were there. They said, "Because God is clearly doing something there. In all the churches we liked, in all the churches that did what we liked, not much was happening. We thought, if God is moving over here, let us get involved." So they host a small group and are becoming part of that church. They were very young old people.

Suggestion Two: Keep Only Cheerful Friends

The second thing: keep only cheerful friends. The grouches will pull you down. Being in Cannon Beach and not knowing anybody is very interesting and very intimidating. I come in and there are 250 to 300 people who have spent a lot of money to come there for the weekend, and part of that weekend is me teaching. As you look at some of them and pass them in the hall, some of them scream, "Stay away." They have "no" written all over them.

I was walking down the beach — I do not wear a watch. Everybody wonders how I know what time it is. Well, everybody around me has a watch and there are clocks all over the place, so I periodically ask someone the time. I was walking the beach and wanted to make sure I was back when Susan got back. There was this guy, and I looked at his wrist to see if he had a watch. I started toward him and then looked at his face and thought, "If I ask him what time it is, he is either going to hit me or charge me." This guy was screaming, "Get away from me."

Every one of these points could be developed much further, but I just ask the question: what kind of face do you have? I get the sense that Jesus had a yes face, a "talk to me" face, an "approach me" face. The kids wanted to hang with Him and talk with Him. The prostitutes, the outcasts, and the tax collectors wanted to hang with Him. There must have been something very physically appealing about Jesus. Paul writes in Romans chapter 15, verse 32, hoping to get to the believers in Rome — hopefully on his way to Spain. He says, "So I will come to you in joy, by the will of God, and find refreshing rest in your company." When people have spent time with you and visited with you, are they refreshed? Do you charge people up, or are you a drain?

Suggestion Three: Keep Learning

The third thing: keep learning. Learn more about computers, crafts, guitars, music, sports — whatever it is, learn. Obviously, Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 and 8, is where Paul talks about learning. He says that he can take all of his accomplishments and put them aside for knowing Christ Jesus, because that is the supreme value — to know Christ. Not just to know about Him, but to know Him intimately, to have a relationship with Him that is intimate, vital, vibrant, and growing. So keep on learning, more and more and more.

Suggestion Four: Enjoy the Simple Things

The fourth thing — and I will spend just a second on it — is to enjoy the simple things. There is a word that I use a lot, and —

The Inertia of a Complicated Life

I have used this word probably for the last two or three years, and it pops up in my conversations all the time. The word is *inertia*. If you go to Webster, there are three or four definitions of inertia. One of them is this: the tendency of matter to remain at rest, or if moving, to keep moving in the same direction unless it is affected by some outside force. In other words, if something gets going, it will just keep going to its natural conclusion.

So I am constantly saying to people, "Where is the inertia on this? If we don't intervene, if we don't become that outside force, where do things go?" Well, let me tell you what is going to happen: your life will get very complicated just through inertia if you don't do something. It is a very complicated world we live in, and everything by its nature wants to get more and more complicated — whether it is a government, a business, or a church. Something is moving, and now we need a new thought, and now we need to move in new directions, and now we need to do this or that.

Technology has this quality as well. Take the cell phone as a perfect example. We were on this Alaskan cruise with extraordinary weather and some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable. The minute we would get into Juneau or Ketchikan or Sitka or any of the places where you could get a cell phone connection, you could see people out dialing their phones.

I have a cell phone, but I don't take incoming calls — I don't even know my own number. Somebody the other day said, "You have a cell phone?" I said yes. They said, "Can I call you?" I said sure. They said, "What's the number?" I said, "I don't know." They said, "Well, don't you get calls?" I said no, because receiving calls is an inconvenience. They said, "Why do you use it?" I said, "I use it when I want to call out — that is when I use it." It is a very handy tool used on my terms.

But some of you — and this is a revolutionary thought, so take this home — just because the phone rings, it does not mean you have to answer it. Just because you have a computer and it can do all this, it does not mean you have to do all of it. The inertia of your life will make things very complicated.

The Inertia of a Packed Schedule

High school students, you can give witness to the truth of this. Let's say you decide you are going to play athletics. All of a sudden it is basically an all-day commitment. If you are playing football, you are starting early in the morning, and if you are playing varsity, you might be done with classes around one or one-thirty in the afternoon. Then they send you to the weight room, move you around, and then you go to practice, and you don't get out of there until four-thirty or six o'clock at night — seven days a week. And when the season is done, they want you to train all year long.

So you end up with a junior high student saying, "I'm so busy." That does not seem right to me. That is inertia.

Permission to Laugh

Now, some of you want Bible. Here you go — Ecclesiastes 3:4: *"There is a time to laugh."* I am giving you permission to laugh, to enjoy, to relax. Not to be frivolous, but to enjoy life. I understand the power of Solzhenitsyn and Bunyan and all of those men who endured prison. I understand people in very hard situations. But there is a time to laugh and enjoy life. It is not only okay — it is even good.

I will give you the other side, because we want to balance it out. Tears happen. Endure, grieve, move on. *"There is a time to weep, and there is a time to laugh. There is a time to mourn, and there is a time to dance."* One author has written, "Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain." Another author writes, "God whispers to us in our pleasure and speaks to our conscience, but He shouts in our pain. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." There is pain in life. There is hurt. That is part of it.

Your Home as a Refuge

Surround yourself with who and what you love — whether that is family, pets, keepsakes, music, or plants. But here is the point underneath all of that: your home is to be your refuge. Webster describes a refuge as a shelter, a protection from danger and difficulty, a safe place. That is what your home is supposed to be — a place where you relax. Some of you have homes filled with tension and pressure, and that is not the way it is supposed to be. It is supposed to be a refuge from all of that. We will talk about this at length next week.

Stewardship of Your Health

Cherish your health. If it is good, work at it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it cannot be improved, get some help. We talk about stewardship, and one dimension of stewardship is the life that God gave you.

Don't Take Guilt Trips

I am all for vacations, but don't take guilt trips. Paul writes in Philippians 3, speaking of this life and why God has called him: *"Brothers, 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."* It is so important to evaluate and remember the past. But you do not need to be held captive by it.

Tell the People You Love That You Love Them

Here is the last thing: tell the people you love that you love them at every opportunity.

Loving Your Kids Well

I'm not very good at this. My kids are really good — almost never will you have a conversation with them where at the end they don't say, "Hey, Dad, I really love you." I thought about those two girls in that car on the way to the beach, and I wonder what their parents' last words were to them. I tend to think of it like if it were me, because I would have probably said something to them like, "Hey, I don't understand you. I don't understand what's going on. You need to get your life together. You need to get this figured out. Now you're in college — grow up a little bit. When you get back, we're going to have a conversation. You need to figure out that major. By the way, can you take this out of your nose?"

I understand all that, but I think you have a better shot at really communicating with them if they know you truly love them. You have to figure out what the tough issues are. It's hard to do, isn't it? You have to know when to say no.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for this, and we thank You for those words — just common sense. We hear them and we go, "Yes, yes, yes," and yet now it's time to apply them, and for whatever reason, it doesn't work. So, God, give us the strength to live in a way that brings honor and glory to You. Help us be the men and the women, the students, that we want to be and know we're supposed to be.

We find all these reasons and all these excuses. Our biggest problem is very simple — Father, we're sinners, and we tend to like our sin more than we like You. So change our hearts. Change our minds. Change the way we think and the way we feel.

We look at that bulletin and see all that You are doing here, God, and we thank You for that. We pray for all the activities that are listed — it is so cool to come out of here in the morning and see literally thousands of items coming here for an M25 project, to see those tangerine shirts, to know the students that are over in the conference center up in room 200, the children who are getting that loving care, that nurturing, those lessons of the truth. Father, we pray for all of those things — for the adults, for the getting plugged in, for the institute classes, all that will happen this week, the small groups, men's ministry, the Parents' Summit tomorrow night, Fuel on Wednesday night. God, You have been so good to us and You have blessed us with so much. Make us faithful stewards of all that You have given us. God, we love You, we thank You, we praise You — in Jesus' name, amen.