What I Learned From My Dad

Following the death of his father Jim Shrader, Tom Shrader shares personal memories and lessons from his father's life, celebrating a man shaped by the Great Depression and World War II who embodied contentment, generosity, and care for people regardless of background. He draws on Philippians 4:9 to show that values are more often caught than taught, and on Romans 6:23 and Ephesians 2:8-10 to make clear that a good life, however admirable, cannot earn salvation. The teaching closes with a pastoral call to keep short accounts with those we love, to face the unavoidability of death honestly, and to ground personal assurance of eternal life in Christ rather than in character or church involvement.

“You can be a reliable friend and a solid worker and a caring person and all involved at church and doing all the Bible studies and leading a small group and be a faithful spouse, but if you don't know Christ, heaven is not in your future.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Standalone Teachings

Recorded: 2006 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 53 min

Themes: grief, legacy, contentment, generosity, death, salvation, family, eternal life, grieving a parent, adult child, facing death, questioning salvation, parent, seeking assurance, honoring father, reflecting on legacy

Scripture: Philippians 4:9, Romans 3, Romans 6:23, John 3:16, John 14:6, Ephesians 2:8-10, James 2:14-26

Theological Themes: soteriology, salvation by grace, justification, ephesians 2:8-9, romans 6:23, sanctification, assurance of salvation, philippians 4:9

Full Transcript

Opening

I want to take this Sunday and talk about my father a little bit. I think most of you know that he died, and I want to reflect on that today. Part of this is not to focus on me, and I hope you are comfortable with that. But the more important part is to help you process all of this, because what I experienced, you will presumably face as well. You all have a mother and a father, and they will one day experience what my dad did. So hopefully this will be helpful to you.

A Life Shared Together

I was thinking about the fifteen years of life we have shared together as a church. When we first started, Sarah was ten and Haley was eight. There has been a lot that we have shared together, and the nature of pastoral life is that as I go through things, you get to be led through them as well. We have watched the girls grow up together. We have had high school graduations, nursing school graduations, and nuclear medicine tech graduations. We have had two weddings, the birth of a grandson, and now another pregnancy — all sorts of celebratory moments.

We have also had the other side of that. There was the Friday that Sarah had her car accident, and I taught that Sunday, which surprised some people. But to me that is part of the pastoral moment, and I hope it was beneficial to you. Throughout Susan's cancer I have tried to be candid and reflect on it periodically. I am as open as I am going to comfortably be, and hopefully that is enough and hopefully it means something to you. The same is true of what we went through this past week or so with my dad.

The Phone Call

My dad actually died on July 2nd, which was a Sunday morning. I received a call the Saturday night before, and my brother told me that my dad had had a heart attack.

A Phone Call That Changed Everything

It had been about 40 or 45 minutes. There was a pulse, but he didn't seem to be responding, and they were on the way to the hospital. When I got that call, it was one of those calls that I had, in my mind, thought through before. I tend to fantasize about those things — how will I respond, how will those things work? The nature of what was said led me to believe it was really serious, so I thought I needed to get there as quickly as I could.

I tried to make an airline reservation with a human and seemed to get tapped into Calcutta every time I made a phone call, so I finally just did it online. I got a one-way ticket, not knowing how long I'd be there. I thought it was really serious, and yet I thought maybe it would be a couple of weeks even that I'd be there for things. Then I got a call the next morning, before I could even get out of town — bags were packed — that he had not made it through the night.

A Very Normal Day

When I got home, I learned a little bit about what had happened. He had had a really normal couple of days. On Friday, along with my mom and a bunch of friends, he had taken a bus up to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play the White Sox. That Saturday morning, he had been to three Little League games, which is a lot. Those two things combined could do in a good man, I think.

My point is it was a very normal day for him. His Saturday routine was to watch Lawrence Welk, then go upstairs, take a shower, and get ready for bed. He had watched Lawrence Welk, went upstairs, slumped over, and my mom heard a thud and didn't get much of a response, so she called a neighbor.

What makes me laugh is that the last show he saw was Lawrence Welk — and when my brother called me, I was watching Lawrence Welk. That's kind of funny. Some of you are wondering who Lawrence Welk is, which makes me laugh too, and it's your loss that you don't know. I try to watch the beginning of it every Saturday night at seven and try to see the end. I don't always get both of those done. Part of that is I can remember as a little boy being at my grandpa's house listening to Lawrence Welk on the radio, and then watching him on television, and knowing my dad was watching that every week. There's some sort of connection there.

The Visitation

When I got back, they were beginning to make arrangements. What we typically do here, if someone dies, is meet with the family, and almost always what's involved is a graveside service and usually something here at the church. Back home, a big part of this is a visitation the night before. We don't do a ton of that out here, it seems to me, but back there it's even bigger than the funeral.

It was a wonderful time. I went back on Sunday. Susan came in on Monday. Tyler, Haley, Timmy, Sarah, and Brayden all came in on Tuesday, so it was really meaningful to have everybody there. They said somewhere between five to six hundred people were at the visitation, which was pretty remarkable.

A lot of old people were there — my dad was 82, so many of his contemporaries who are still alive came. I find that in those moments, your mind drifts between the seriousness of the occasion and also making interesting observations. One of my observations was: if I were the funeral home director and I saw this crowd, I would go home and order a new car, because they were just lined up. There were a lot of prospects at that event, it seemed to me — and shrinking. I don't often feel tall, but I felt tall in that room. If you were in line to see my mother, depending on what time of the evening you arrived, you would stand about an hour in that line. It took about four hours for us to get through the whole thing. It was a great time.

Who My Dad Was

So I thought what I'd do today is talk a little bit about him, and then more importantly, share some lessons from this. Bear with me — even if this is hard for you, you only have about 35 more minutes to endure.

My dad was born June 13th, 1924, which made him 82 years old. He was born — and he would want you to know this, it was important to him — in Melrose, Iowa. Melrose is a town of about 400, which dropped down to around 200 and has had a little bit of a resurgence. They built a dam and there's a big lake there now, so there's a lot of recreational activity going on. Melrose is called Iowa's Little Ireland. It's a little pocket of Irish people who settled there, so names like McGrath and McKinley are pretty popular in that area.

One thing they can talk about when it comes to their heritage is that in 1937 — and we're struggling now in comparison — they won the state basketball tournament. That doesn't sound like a big thing until you understand that in that day there were no classifications. There was no A, B, C, double-A, triple-A, or one, two, three. The whole state played in the same tournament, so whether you had 2,000 kids or 150 kids, you all competed together — and Melrose won. To this day, they still talk about it. I did a memorial service at Sun Lakes not long ago, and a man got up and said, talking about Iowa, "You know, in 1937, the Melrose Shamrocks won." I thought, my gosh, I'll never get away from this. They were 36-0, and they were proud of it — still are.

My dad was one of six kids. His father worked on the railroad. They had a little house that we used to visit — a really small house, two bedrooms, where my grandma and grandpa lived with all those children.

Growing Up With Nothing

All six boys and girls were upstairs in one room — imagine that as you're developing and growing, as a teenage girl or boy, with all the awkwardness that comes with it. One good thing: they didn't have to share a bathroom, because that was down the road a bit, so they would go there for that.

When I went back, I stayed with my mom, and her sister was there. Susan and I stayed with them, so every night we would end up back at the house for that last half hour, 45 minutes, or hour of the day. Toward the beginning of that week — it might have been Monday night before Susan got there — we were sitting around, and what I've discovered is helpful in those instances is to pull out a map, especially with these little towns.

Melrose is here — 400 people. Lucas County, and the county seat is Chariton, Iowa, which is about 4,000. I got the map out and we started talking about all these different towns. If you just drew a little circle around Chariton, you'd probably hit 40 towns, burghs, and villages. I'd mention a town, and then they'd talk about what that town was known for: that's where the Polish kids were, that's where the miners were, that's where the Germans were.

They talked about their life — my mom and her sister talked about growing up, about what they had and didn't have. My aunt talked about how, as a little girl, she wanted a Mickey Mouse watch for Christmas. That was the deal. She let her parents know, really all year, that what she wanted for Christmas was a Mickey Mouse watch. When Christmas came, there simply wasn't enough money to get one.

I've discovered we can't even relate to that. We are only two generations away from it, and yet we are hard-pressed at Christmas to buy gifts simply because if we want something, we get it. To watch them go without was striking to me.

A Glimpse Into Their World

There were two things they talked about that just stopped me cold. They only bathed once a week, and they all bathed in the same water. Interestingly enough, we now have all these wipes and gels and everything, and we're sick all the time — and they never got sick, which makes no sense to me either.

The other thing — and I thought about how to share this — my point here is simply to give you a small sense of what their life was like. They had some distant relatives who hit it big and ended up in Washington, D.C. My mom was describing when those relatives would come to visit. You get the scene: people are coming that you want to impress, so you put out the good china, the good flatware, you really clean the house.

Now, I don't mean this to be anything other than perspective. They said that when these cousins came to visit, they would buy a roll of toilet paper — because other than that, it was Sears catalogs and Montgomery Wards catalogs. That was it. And then my mom added: "And we were rich compared to the Schraders."

So that is my dad's background. That is what he was all about. When you hear that, you get a glimpse of what he was like, and it helps you understand a little of how he thought.

The Greatest Generation

In Tom Brokaw's book *The Greatest Generation*, he really captures this, and I think it's helpful. I honestly don't see my dad as anything unique. Physically and financially, they probably had less than a lot of people, but it wasn't terribly unusual. Brokaw writes about walking down the beaches with the veterans who had landed on D-Day, and he says this:

> "As I walked the beaches with the veterans who'd landed there and now returned for this anniversary, men in their 60s and 70s, and I listened to their stories in the inns and the cafes, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done. I realized that they had been around me as I was growing up, and that I had failed to appreciate what they'd been through, what they'd accomplished. These men and women came of age in the Great Depression, when economic despair hovered over the land like a plague. They had watched their parents lose their businesses, their farms, their jobs, and their hopes. They had learned to accept the future that played out one day at a time. Then, just as there was a glimmer of economic recovery, war exploded across Europe and Asia. When Pearl Harbor made it irrefutably clear that America was not a fortress, this generation was summoned to the parade ground and told to train for war. They left their ranches, their jobs on Main Street, they gave up their place in the assembly line, they quit school or went from cap and gown directly into uniform. They answered the call to help save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist dictators. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of a workaday world, they were fighting, often hand-to-hand, in the most primitive conditions possible."

It was that generation. And I think we tend to take that for granted.

My Dad's Service

My dad went into the service on April 21st, 1943, and was released on March 29th, 1946. On April 10th, 1945, he was shot, and received for that a Purple Heart.

I say all that because I think about this kid and what that experience must have been like — someone who had never really been away from Melrose, and certainly never out of Iowa. Maybe to Davenport occasionally, or maybe to Des Moines for the state fair. And he was petrified of water. On a couple of occasions when we were up at Sea Ranch, you would see him stay away from the bluff. Even walking past the Dell over Coronado —

A Man of His Generation

Tom Brokaw's words capture something I recognize in my own family. Let me share two more paragraphs from his writing. When the United States entered World War II, the government turned to ordinary Americans — guys like my dad — and asked them for extraordinary sacrifice, service, and heroics. Many Americans met those high expectations and then returned home to lead ordinary lives.

When the war ended, more than twelve million men and women put their uniforms aside and returned to civilian life. I want you to get a sense of that. This is 1945 or so, sixty-plus years ago. The country was smaller than it is now. Do you hear that number? Twelve million. And I am not in any way demeaning our current service members, but when we talk about 125,000 or 150,000 troops in Iraq, that is a fraction of what was engaged in World War II. The latest statistics I have heard put the number of World War II veterans dying every day somewhere between 750 and 1,000. It gives you a sense of how many of these men and women there were.

They went back to work at their old jobs or started small businesses. They became big-city cops and firemen. They finished their degrees or enrolled in college for the first time. They became school teachers, insurance salesmen, craftsmen, and local politicians. They were not widely known outside their families or their communities.

For many, the war years were enough adventure to last a lifetime. They were proud of what they had accomplished but rarely discussed their experiences with each other. They became, once again, ordinary people — the kind of men and women who always have been the foundation of the American way. That was my dad.

The Measure of a Man in the Details

The dates here become important, and I think they are revealing. When my dad came back and went to college, I find myself watching the contrasts between generations. I run into so many young people today who say that going to college full-time is so demanding they cannot also work. My dad went to college full-time and worked full-time at Oscar Mayer — and what he did there was kill pigs before they were slaughtered. On top of that, he had a part-time job in a mortuary, driving around picking up bodies, because they let him sleep there so he did not have to spend money on a room.

He went home one weekend for a dance. My mom always tells the story that the Melrose boys were boys who could dance — everyone except one of them. That would be the DNA that was passed down to me. That was my dad. He started dating my mom, and now listen to these dates, because they give you yet another insight into the man.

On June 6th, 1948, a Sunday, he graduated from college. On June 7th, 1948, a Monday, he married my mom. On June 14th, 1948, a Monday, he started at Davenport Bank. He went from college to marriage, took the train out to Colorado Springs for the honeymoon, celebrated, and came back. My aunt recalled that the only thing she remembered about that honeymoon was receiving a postcard from my mom that said, "Wish you were here." I do not know exactly what that means, but it cannot be good.

Then he went to work at the bank. I want you to get a sense of the man — of his stability and reliability. He went to work at the bank on June 14th, 1948, and retired from that same bank in 1990. That is forty-two years. He married my mom on June 7th, 1948, and was still married to her when he died. That is fifty-eight years. That is the kind of man he was — steady, consistent, rooted.

A Celebrity Wherever He Went

There is a large auto dealership in town — six or seven dealerships combined in one place, selling Chevys, Lexus, Volkswagen, all of it. The son of the owner was at the visitation, and he said to me, "Your dad was a celebrity at our place." What he meant was that wherever my dad went, it was an event. He only ever had the oil changed at the dealership — why would you go anywhere else? When he went in, my mom was always a little thrilled, because it would take the whole morning. He had to make the rounds and check in with everyone.

Many of the men there talked about how my dad was a mentor to them, how he was part of the group that hired them, and how he stayed with them and never let them go.

How Is Your Mother?

The most frequently asked question I have received is, "How is your mother?" Let me give you one illustration of how she is doing. I tried to call her this morning and the line was busy, so I may try again between services. When we were walking through the funeral home making arrangements, she stopped and looked around. She said, "I was looking for your dad." That happened three or four times while we were there — just her instinctively asking, where is your dad? After fifty-eight years, rarely apart, and virtually together every single day since he retired in 1990, that makes complete sense. She is doing okay.

My dad handled all the finances. My mom is a little bit like me in that regard — and if something had happened to him before now...

The Beauty of a Simple Life

My dad taught me the beauty of a simple life. He was not a simpleton, but he was a simple man. He didn't need a lot of complicated stuff. He could sit in our backyard and be mystified that airplanes would stay in the air. He would sit on the porch at the place they had across from Fashion Square and watch the airplanes go by.

We were taking a ride one day, years ago, out on that end of town, and there were a bunch of orange groves around. I think we were coming over Baseline, and we stopped at a stoplight. I looked over at him and could just see he was all teared up and emotional. I said, "What's the problem?" And he said, "When I was a little boy growing up, I knew oranges grew on trees. I just never thought I'd see one." That's kind of how he thought.

We were watching the news one day, and the Powerball was at $80 million. I said, "What would you do if you won the Powerball?" He said, "I would never buy a ticket." I said, "Well, if I gave you a ticket and you won the Powerball, what would you do?" He said, "I wouldn't change one thing in my life." If you listen to me teach over a period of time, among some doctrinal truths, practically what I'll talk about is contentment. He kind of embodied that. We learned that from him.

People Matter

He also taught me that people matter. I'm going to give you two examples, and there were dozens — literally dozens.

The first was his cardiologist. He was a man from India, and his wife was an Indian internist. I don't typically associate cardiologists with emotion, though I do associate them with the heart. This man sought me out at the visitation and began to cry. He said, "There is no way I could have what I have today if it wasn't for your dad."

I learned something that night that I hadn't fully understood before. My dad really didn't care deeply about banking, though he did it for 42 years. That was simply his vehicle to help people. That's what this man was saying. He said, "I came to town, I didn't know anybody. I had no collateral. I had a degree and nothing else. There were a lot of people who wouldn't talk to me, and your dad talked to me. Your dad worked this through, gave me this loan, and set me up. I am what I am and have what I have because of your dad."

Toward the end of the visitation, I had stepped away to the far end of the room, where a video was scrolling with pictures of my dad, my mom, and some of the boys. I was standing there when I heard a gentleman say, "Mr. Schrader." I turned around, and there was a man I had heard a great deal about but had never met. His name is Tyrone Orr. My dad used to drink out of an Orr Mortuary mug, and I'd heard about Tyrone for years, but we'd never met. He was there, and he had a lady with him I assumed was his wife.

Tyrone said, "Let me tell you something. There was not one person in town who would touch my business. I went to your dad and told him I had no collateral. He said, 'Let me talk about your character. Give me some character references.' Your dad checked out my character, gave me a loan, and I have this business today — everything I have — because of your dad." The woman with him wasn't his wife. It was his mother. She was eighty years old. She said, "I want to tell you something about your dad. A few years ago, I could not get anybody to come out and work on my furnace. It was winter and it was cold. I went over to the bank and saw your dad. I said, 'Mr. Schrader, I can't get anybody to work on my furnace.' He said, 'You go home.'" She said by the time she got home, there was a man there to fix that furnace.

It was a big deal to him. He had a special place in his heart for hurting people, for hard-working and honest people, and it really didn't matter to him whether you were Black or Indian or Latino. People matter.

A Lesson in Being Present

Before those lessons, something else happened that stayed with me. On the day I left to come back, I took my mom to show her how to put gas in the car. She had never done it. It was a meaningful little moment. We pulled up and I said, "I want you to think this through with me. What should we do first?" She said, "Well, we should find out where you put in the gas — where's the gas cap?" I said, "Great." She went around to the back, found it, and started poking at it. She said, "I can't get it open." I said, "There's a button up in the car. We need to go get that first." So we did. Then I said, "Now give me your credit card and we'll get it started." She said, "I'm going to pay cash." I said, "Well, then I'm in real trouble, because I've never paid cash for gas. I don't even know if they take cash at this place. You're going to have to take it from here." We figured it out — we paid after we pumped. After we put the gas in, she asked, "Can I just squeeze it? Will it shut off?" It really was a sweet moment.

Then we went inside, and she was so proud of herself that she started telling the attendant this was her first time ever pumping gas. The attendant just blew her off. I thought, "What a jerk." And then I caught myself and wondered how many times I've done the equivalent of that — how many times someone has shared something meaningful with me, and I just didn't get it.

I received a wonderful card from someone here at the church. I received so many cards, and thank you so much for the cards and the letters.

Values Are Caught, Not Taught

The emails and the flowers — I would put your dad in that one-of-a-kind group. He was always coming to you, always asking about you. He was always a friend's friend. That is how I saw it.

Here is the next thing I learned: values are caught, not necessarily taught. This is interesting to me. As you can see, I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. I said to the boys, can you remember one piece of information that Dad gave you? We sat down and collectively, we could not come up with one moment where our dad gave us a bit of advice. Not one. I cannot think of one time where he sat me down and said, "Listen, son." But that does not mean he did not have influence on us.

One author reflecting on his own father wrote these words: "He didn't tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it." That was my dad. His fingerprints were all over us boys. We learned principles like you do not buy something unless you can pay for it. He never sat us down and said, "Let me take you through economics." He just showed it to you.

I have friends who are a little bitter at their parents. Their parents are in that seventy-plus range, and they say, "My parents never told me that they loved me." Let me tell you something — that generation did not traffic in that kind of emotion or language. They did not. My dad told me he loved me every day. He said, "You can stay here and eat here." That is how he did it. I have also observed about that generation that they tend to be better grandparents than parents in terms of emotion and the things we ascribe to parenthood.

In Philippians chapter four, Paul has a great phrase. He said, "The things you've heard and the things you've seen and the things you've received from me, now go and do them." Values are caught, not taught. It would be great if they were both taught and caught — that would be the ideal. That is what Paul says in Philippians 4:9: these are the things I have taught you, these are the things you should catch, now go and do them. How we live is important.

You Are Leaving a Legacy Whether You Realize It or Not

Here is the next thing I learned: you are leaving a legacy whether you realize it or not. The phrase I wrote is this — your life is not legacy neutral.

Something really interesting happened to me. I was sitting there and my mom opened a country club bill. When we were kids, you went to the country club, ordered a cheeseburger and fries and a Coke, signed, and put a number on it. Over the years, enough people must have called to dispute charges, so now everything is computerized. You get the time of the order, the server, and the exact items. Here was my dad's bill. He would probably have been at the country club playing golf ten or eleven times that month. It was like a picture of his life. Here was the date, here were the cart fees, and every time it was the same — soup and lemonade, soup and lemonade, ten times, nine times. One time, somebody must have bought the lemonade, because it was only soup.

I thought, we are all cranking out the equivalent of that. Maybe not a printout, but everything you say and everything you do has an impact on somebody. You are creating a legacy. It could be good or bad, positive or negative. There is a moment coming when we will have a memorial service for you and let people talk about you. What is it you want them to say? Do you want them to have to lie just to make you sound like a relatively decent person? Figure out what you want them to say, and begin to live life so that they can tell the truth at that moment.

Death Is Unavoidable

Here is something else I learned — it is not new: death is unavoidable. A lot of people said to me, "We were shocked at your father's death." I know exactly what they mean, and I understand it. But technically, what we should say is that we are not shocked by the fact that he died. We are shocked by the timing of it. I cannot imagine anyone thinking Jim Schrader was going to live forever. We are not shocked by his dying. We are shocked by the circumstances. It becomes an important moment for us to come to grips with that.

I had a chance to speak at the memorial service. The boys gathered together and said we could speak if we wanted. They said, "Let's let Tom do it." I said, "That's fine with me — I'm up for that task." My other brother said, "I want Tom to go last and tie it all together."

One of the points I made at that memorial service is that the reminiscing about my dad is wonderful. I love it. I love the stories. I did a little driving tour — I put the kids and Susan in the van and said, "I want to take you around and show you my life. I want to show you every house I lived in, where I played my first Little League game." The enthusiasm level in the van was a little low at that point, just so you know.

The highlight of the trip was when I took them down to Davenport Bank, to the building itself. I cannot go into that building without crying. It is a wonderful building, built in 1929. It dominates — and I cannot believe I am using these words together — the skyline of Davenport. It is a wonderful structure. The first floor of the bank lobby is probably three stories high, and all around it in paintings is the story of the town of Davenport from around 1620 to the Civil War. It is an unbelievable building. I love that building.

Saying Goodbye Without Knowing It

I love the reminiscing. The highlight for me was meeting Tyrone Orr and hearing about my dad. But to reminisce about him is one thing — to miss the moment that God gives you to reflect on your own mortality would be a tragedy. Death is unavoidable.

As I was going through O'Hare, I was frustrated and tired. I was sitting on the plane, turning over this idea about saying goodbye. In what I do, it seems like I regularly deal with people who are facing death, and this idea of saying goodbye comes up constantly. We have this theoretical discussion: is it better to have someone die like my dad did — there it is and it's over — or is there this long period of time? I think the sudden passing tends to be better, but God does what is right, and whatever it should be, it is.

One of the difficult things about someone just dropping over is that you don't have the opportunity to say goodbye. Then I realized something, sitting on that little plane in the middle of nowhere: we did say goodbye — we just didn't realize it was goodbye. There is a last time you are going to speak with someone.

I don't want to get maudlin about this. I'm not saying that every time someone stands up and says, "I'm going to the store," you should think, "I may never see them again." But here is what I am saying: it is helpful to keep those accounts clean. Not because you may never see someone again, but so that if you don't, there is nothing left unsaid.

I was not flying home thinking, "I wish I would have said this, or I wish I would have said that." I had said to him everything I really had to say. There might have been a greater intensity to it if I had known it was the end. It might have been a different moment at a bedside. But the reality is I was not kicking myself. I had always kind of assumed that the last time I saw him, or the last time he left town, could be the last.

Struggle Is a Vital Part of Life

Struggle is a vital part of life. When I think about my parents and those financial things — bathing in the same water once a week, no toilet tissue, an outside pump, not having anything, getting a nickel for candy and that being a huge deal — I think about all of those things. I think struggle is good. There is something inherently good about earning something and striving for it.

But there is also spiritual struggle. My brother found a note — almost like a diary entry — that my dad had written. It is just a few lines, just bullet points. I thought a long time about it before I decided to share it with you, and I am positive he never intended for it to be read out loud. He wrote this:

*"I try to put God first in my life, but I know I fail. I tend to be nice to those I feel are nice to me. When I feel injured, I try to get back at people. I tend to be envious and jealous of others. I can be irritable, sulking around the house, guilty of bad talk, foul language. I want things my way. I think of myself first."*

If I had read those words at that visitation and asked who this was, there is not a person in that room who would have said Jim Schrader. And it is not that he was hypocritical. It was meaningful to stand in that line and hear what people said about him, especially the people he worked with — they kept saying he was so patient, so gentle. It got to the point where one of my brothers said, "Who are these people talking about? I didn't recognize any of them."

But what you see in that note is probably an accurate description of my dad. I am sure he would not have written those words if he did not struggle with them — and that struggle is not unique to him. Do you not want to get even with somebody when they injure you? You want your own way, don't you? I haven't met anybody yet who isn't a controller. Everybody wants their own way. Everybody thinks of themselves first.

Paul said it this way: the things I want to do, I don't do, and the things I don't want to do, I do. That is the struggle we all have. And it was meaningful to find that note and to see that my dad wrestled with that whole process just as we do.

What You Know Trumps What You Feel

I learned through this that people listen. Over the years I have tried to take certain ideas and put them into phrases, because you are more likely to remember a phrase than a theological truth. One of those phrases is: what you know trumps what you feel — not just in a moment like the one I went through, but in life generally.

I received a lot of cards, and let me read you two of them. One said, "Our prayers for you at this difficult time is that God will fill your heart with what you know." Another said, "We sure understand your sorrow. Each of us have lost our dads. We know that all that you know will trump what you feel."

I did not watch television or listen to the radio for a week while I was home. When I came back, I set the alarm, woke up that first morning, and the news came on — and it was immediately a serial killer, a rapist, war in Israel, on and on and on. There is a time, and there is a darkness. If you are watching television today, the talking heads are saying we are at World War III. Newt this morning was pretty powerful on this, saying it is not a conventional war, but we have it going on in India and Afghanistan, we just stopped five guys in Canada who wanted to blow up the parliament, we have attempts here —

God's Control Over What We Feel

When things feel like they are getting out of control, it is really important to remember that God is in control. What I know trumps what I feel. To know that — having heard it over the years — and then in a moment like we had in our family, to have someone write those words to me, makes me smile.

Do Good Works Earn Heaven?

Here is the last thing. I said there are two questions I am getting all the time. Number one, how is your mom? Here is the other one: do you think your dad is in heaven? I wanted to be really cautious here. I wanted to make sure I communicated clearly, so I wrote some things down.

My dad was a reliable friend, a solid worker, a caring man, an active church member, a faithful husband, a proud father, and a loving grandpa. And none of those things determine whether he goes to heaven or not. He was all of those things — a reliable friend, a solid worker, forty-two years without a complaint, I guarantee you, a caring man, active in his church, a faithful husband, a proud father, and a loving grandfather. But none of those things determine whether a person is in heaven.

The Bible teaches us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If you listened to my father's note as I read it to you, that is the human condition. All of us — universally, every person without exception, no one in here is the exception — are in sin. And the wage of sin, Paul says in Romans 6:23, is death. Death means separation. It is not just physical death; it is spiritual death. Sin separates us from God.

The Free Gift of God

Romans 6:23 continues: "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Jesus says it this way in John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me." And John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish" — not spiritually, though we will all perish physically — "but have eternal life."

From a theological and doctrinal perspective, Paul says it this way in Ephesians chapter two, verses eight, nine, and ten: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

The Takeaway for Every One of Us

You can be a reliable friend and a solid worker and a caring person and all involved at church and doing all the Bible studies and leading a small group and be a faithful spouse if you are married or a celibate single if you are single, and a proud parent and a loving grandparent. But if you do not know Christ, heaven is not in your future. That is a really important truth, and death crystallizes all of it.

So the answer to the question about my dad is the same answer to the question about you or me. You are not going to be in heaven because you think you are a good person — and I am going to help you with this — you are not. That is God's judgment. "There is no one good, no not one," Romans chapter three. All of us have sinned. All of us have fallen short of the glory of God. There is no way that you or I can earn salvation or work our way there.

Death as a Moment of Reckoning

As I said to the people at that funeral service, I want to make that same point to you. A moment like this — death, especially if it is somebody you know or a family member, but really anybody's death — hopefully just a little bit of the story of my dad brings him alive to you enough that you can sense all of this. Death is always one of those moments where you have, I think by God's grace, this great opportunity to think about life, and if necessary to reevaluate, if absolutely necessary to redefine, redirect, and recommit a life.

I think about my dad's destiny, and I cannot figure those things out entirely. I remember one day — this was years ago — we were walking along and I was explaining salvation to him. He said to me, "You mean if I was a believer and I killed somebody, I would still go to heaven?" And I smiled, because it meant that he really understood this grace thing. Grace was clicking. The tumblers were coming together.

I cannot look at his heart any more than I can look at your heart. What I can tell you is this: his destination is not determined by whether he was a reliable friend or a solid worker or a caring man or active in church or whether he was a faithful husband or a proud dad or a loving grandpa. His destination is determined by whether he knows Christ in a personal way — just like yours. So it is a great moment to rethink this.

Now, the irony of all of this is that it is a wonderful introduction to next week's study. It really is a great lead-in as you look at James.

Opening Prayer and Reflection

James chapter 2, verses 14 to 26, raises the question: what good is your faith if you don't have works? How do these things come together? How do faith and works play out in our lives? Do works not matter? If we are going to say we are saved by grace through faith, do we throw out works and say it doesn't matter how you live? We know that is not true.

I truly pray that God would use this moment. First of all, I thank you for indulging me, but I hope God uses this moment to cause us to pause and reflect on our own lives — to rethink if necessary, redefine, redirect, and recommit.

Let us pray together.

Father, thank You for all that You give us. Lord, I thank You for fifty-six years with my dad. I thank You for his faithful provision for us. There were times when I know he went without so that we would have, and when I see a bumper sticker that says "Pursue Delayed Gratification," I think of him. Thank You for his modeling to me of life. Thank You that he taught me that people really do matter — it doesn't matter what color their skin is or their economic background; they are people. Thank You for all the lessons that were taught.

God, thank You for the opportunity to be reminded that death is unavoidable. Death is part of life, and the ultimate truth is that I am really not ready to live until I am ready to die. God, remind us that every time we say goodbye to somebody, it could be the last time we see them. Let us keep short accounts. God, put in us a gentle spirit, firm in the truth. Help us see that all of us want our own way, that all of us have a bone that is envious, and that all of us are sinners. Some of us know Christ, and God, we still struggle — we are not perfect. I pray for those who are here today. God, I have met so many people who are here for the first time, or for the first time in a long time, and there is a reason for that. I thank You that we are here, and I pray that You use this time, this message, and this moment to touch our hearts and open our eyes.