How Was 2006 How to Make 2007 the Greatest

Tom Shrader opens with a personal announcement that his wife Susan's cancer has returned and is now in her bones, framing this as a pastoral moment about transparency and trusting God's sovereignty. Drawing primarily from 2 Timothy 4, he walks through Paul's final charge — fighting the good fight, finishing the race, and keeping the faith — as the lens through which to evaluate the past year and set direction for the next. He closes with practical encouragements: deepen one key friendship, increase personal freedom from bondage, feed a genuine passion, and expand your perspective through Scripture and broader reading.

“What ultimately determines whether my year is good or bad is how do I respond to those things.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Year in Review

Recorded: 2006 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 56 min

Themes: suffering, faith, new year, perseverance, prayer, transparency, hope, finishing well, facing terminal illness, caregiver, pastor, grieving spouse, struggling with fear, parent, midlife, navigating uncertainty

Scripture: Galatians 6:3, Psalm 90:12, 2 Timothy 4:6-8, Ephesians 6:11, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, 2 Timothy 2:4, 1 Corinthians 7:23, Romans 9:3-4, Philippians 1:9, Ephesians 3:16, Daniel 3:18, Matthew 5:16, Acts 20

Theological Themes: sovereignty of God, pastoral care, eschatology, sanctification, biblical endurance, 2 timothy, spiritual formation, trust in god

Full Transcript

Family Update

There is some family business I need to take care of. These are always awkward moments, but they need to happen, and I have promised you over the years that they would happen. It was two years ago that Susan was diagnosed with her cancer, and we have been through a great deal — four surgeries and two rounds of chemotherapy. You know the list probably better than I do, because you have lived it with us.

Just about a month ago, she went in for her normal standard MRI, and when the results came back, the doctor said there was something there that was a little worrisome. So over the holiday period, we spent a significant amount of time at doctors and hospitals, and talking to one another. We knew this two or three weeks ago, but I did not think Christmas was the time to share it. I suppose I would rather disrupt your New Year's than your Christmas — but the cancer is back.

The good news is that it is not in any organs. The not-so-good news is that it is in her bones, specifically in her sternum, and they are treating it the way they can, which right now is chemotherapy. The doctor's words were: "We can't cure it, we can't do surgery on it, but we can treat it." There is a heaviness to hearing that. I can see it on your faces, and obviously it is heavy for Susan and me and the girls — and when I say girls now, I mean the children and their spouses and the grandkids, once they are old enough to understand.

I have tried to be as honest as I can with you throughout this process without dragging you through every detail. I will keep you informed going forward.

How You Can Help

I know you are trying to figure out what you can do, so let me tell you. You can pray — that is the best thing you can do. Susan also appreciates cards, which are always meaningful, and she appreciates email. Those things matter enormously. As for food, she is not eating much right now, so the only place it would land is on me, and I am a big guy who does not need more food. I genuinely appreciate the gesture, but please understand.

Here is what I would ask you not to do, and I hope you hear this in the right spirit. I know people want to help, and one of the ways people want to help is to share their cures. You have been to Thailand or Tijuana or Taiwan or Tucson — somewhere beginning with a T — and you have a pill or a drug or a remedy, and I do not want to minimize it. Perhaps your aunt's life was spared through something like that. But we have been through stacks of literature and bottles of things that people have sent, and from the very beginning, Susan has been extraordinarily comfortable with the team she has around her. She has the doctors she trusts, she has her team, she has her vitamins and her nutrition, and she is very happy and not looking for anything additional in that area.

That is not in any way a shot at anyone who has offered. I saw an interview with Michael Landon when he had cancer and appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Johnny asked him what the worst part of it was, and Michael Landon said the worst part was all his friends who really, really wanted to help by bringing him all these different remedies. That did not fully make sense to me until I went through this myself. Some of you are nodding because you know exactly what that means.

So I am not putting any of it down. I am simply saying, if you want to know what I would ask you not to do, it is to present me with fifteen different options. I make none of these decisions anyway — Susan handles it. We have done thorough investigation, as you can imagine, and we are very comfortable with what is in place. I hope you hear that in its spirit, and not as any personal criticism.

Walking Through This Publicly

I also want to deal with all of this as publicly as we can, because I think it matters. It is easy to watch a short, heavyset guy teach when everything is going fine. Let us watch what happens when things are not fine. I have told Susan that some of the most powerful lessons we have been part of have come out of the last two years, and that is almost always reflected in your emails and responses. I love that, and it is very real.

We are no different from you in many of these ways. I was talking with a man a couple of weeks ago whose wife is in a similar situation. He holds a theological persuasion that leans toward health and wealth, and to hear him describe what he was experiencing, I finally said to him: I would jettison that theology as fast as I possibly could. His theology had him in bondage. His theology was not working, and when a theology is not working, that tells you the theology is wrong. God's theology, as I understand it scripturally, is that He is sovereign, and we see Him and understand through all of it — through all the human emotions. In a real way, the last two or three weeks have actually produced wonderful conversations about life and death and family.

he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another. For each one will bear his own load."

Self-examination is critical. You are doing really well if you understand its importance. The problem is that most of us only examine ourselves when something goes wrong, when there's a crisis, when there's pain. We don't do it on a regular basis as a discipline.

The Power of Self-Examination

Samuel Johnson said, "We need to be reminded more than instructed." You hear that once a year as we do our annual Review and Preview. Over the years, we've taken one Sunday and asked how last year went, then the next Sunday to show you how to make the coming year the greatest year of your life. Last year, for the first time, we condensed it into a single week, and that is what we are doing again.

When we talk about how a year went, you have a certain set of questions that run through your mind automatically. It is like asking about a restaurant. I was playing golf the other day with a friend, and I mentioned a restaurant to him, and he asked, "Is it a good place?" When I said yes, he followed up: "What makes it good?" That is the equivalent of asking how was 2006 — good, what made it good? Bad, what made it bad?

When he asked about the restaurant, I said I liked the food and I liked the environment. Susan and I went there on Christmas Eve, actually. I said, "Hey, why don't we go — there'll be a piano player," and so we went, really just to hang and enjoy it, not even for a full dinner. The same kind of question applies to your life. What made it a good year or a bad year?

There are typical answers people reach for. If you made $100,000 in 2005 and only $25,000 in 2006, that is probably going to have an impact on how you feel about the year. So you talk about money, or you talk about health, or you talk about relationships. But here is what I want you to see: those circumstantial things, you cannot stop them.

I would never stand back and say a year was lousy simply because of circumstances like sickness. What I am saying is that you can isolate your life from those circumstances by understanding that that whole arena of conversation, though important, is not what is ultimately significant. All of that other stuff is going to happen. It just is. Cancer happens. Kids get sick.

Circumstances Are Not What Ultimately Determines Your Year

I did not sleep well the other night, so I turned on the radio around three o'clock, and they were doing the news. There was a story about a gentleman on the west side — some of you heard this — who did not know his young grandson was behind his truck, and he accidentally ran over his four-year-old grandson. When I heard that, I literally moaned. The depth of that pain is something I cannot even get my arms around.

That is what we are talking about when we put all these things together and call them life. And life is just going to happen to you. Some of you get a stack of it that seems to never end, and it feels like certain people just keep having more and more difficult things dumped on them. We have a woman we have gotten to know and really enjoy — we had her over for Thanksgiving this year — and it seems like every new chapter of her life brings another round of difficult circumstances. She is a wonderful woman. But God either causes those things or allows them, and He is God.

And that is not what ultimately determines whether a year is good or bad. What ultimately determines whether my year is good or bad is how I respond to those things. So let me go through some things quickly. As I said, we need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed, and so much of this is reminder.

You are doing really well if you understand the importance of what we are doing right now: self-examination. Paul writes in Galatians 6, verse 3: "If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another. For each one will bear his own load."

Seeing Yourself Clearly

"If anybody thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself." Galatians 6:3 says that each one should test his own actions. It is very difficult to see ourselves for who we really are. There are two things required in that process: working through it on your own, and getting input from other people. You may have a pretty good sense of many things about yourself, but you cannot see everything.

If you are married, God has given you someone who can help you in this process — if you will listen. Early in a marriage, a spouse may say things and the other will retaliate, and that closes up that spirit of honest feedback. The goal is to get to a place where you can say, "I want to hear these things."

Here is an example. After a Sunday service that felt particularly strong, the question came up: how was the message? The answer came back that it was not very good — that it rambled, did not have a clear point, and that a couple of things were said that either did not need to be said or could have been said better. The immediate reaction was, "Who are you to lay your hand on God's anointed?" But the honest response was: she was right. The moment she said it, the thought followed — I did not need to say that that way.

That kind of feedback is something to grow from and benefit from. You need those people in your life so that you get an accurate view of who you are.

The Value of Honest Input — Including Encouragement

When we talk about getting input from others, we tend to think only of criticism — but it is not always criticism. There was a conversation with a man on campus where he was told, "I think you are a leader." He pushed back: "I don't think I'm a leader." The response was, "Well, all those people are following you." He said, "I never realized that."

You need both kinds of input: someone to say when something is not working, and someone to point out your areas of strength. You need that desperately.

Understanding the Value of Time

You are doing well if you understand the value of time. Psalm 90:12 says, "Teach us to number our days aright, that we might gain a heart of wisdom." In other words, help us understand the finiteness of time.

Here is a list of people who died this year: Lou Rawls, Shelley Winters, Wilson Pickett, Coretta Scott King, Betty Friedan, Peter Benchley, Kurt Gowdy, Dennis Weaver, Don Knotts, Darren McGavin, Dana Reeve, Kirby Puckett, David Stapleton, Oleg Cassini, Buck Owens, Lynn Nofziger, Cap Weinberger, Gene Pitney, June Pointer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Milton Friedman, Louis Rukeyser, Floyd Patterson, Lloyd Bentsen, Billy Preston, Aaron Spelling, Patsy Ramsey, Ken Lay, June Allyson, Red Buttons, Mickey Spillane, Mike Douglas, Glenn Ford, Bob Mathias, Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter, Patty Berg, Ann Richards, Byron Nelson, Buck O'Neil, Jane Wyatt, Red Auerbach, Ed Bradley, Jack Palance, Bo Schembechler, Robert Altman, Willie Pep, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Peter Boyle, Lamar Hunt, James Brown, Gerald Ford, Saddam Hussein. And that is just an abbreviated list. To that list we would add: my dad died in July.

The point of that list is that whether you are rich or poor, conservative or liberal, white or black, an opera singer or James Brown — whatever you are — you are going to die. It does not matter who you are; the reality is identical for every one of us. In fact, some of you will probably die before I do. That ought to motivate you.

Living With the Reality of Death

In a healthy way, there has been an obsession with death since childhood — not the morbid part of it, but the reality of it, so that it affects the way you live. Someone recently asked whether there is a list of things you want to do while you are on this earth. Do you have that list? What is on it? And why are you not doing those things?

The hope is that the list has more depth to it than simply going to Paris, or seeing the Empire State Building, or visiting Sea Ranch. It ought to have more substance than that. And you do not have forever to achieve it.

The Urgency of a Life Well Lived

Why don't you open your Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 4. We have about a half hour to work through this material. 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 6: "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, the time for my departure has come." That word translated "departure" is used in other places to speak of a ship being loosened from its docking. The time for my departure has come.

There ought to be in our lives a sense of urgency. I remember when I wasn't very old, I said to my mom, "I wish I never had to sleep. I wish I could stay awake all day — I have so much stuff I want to do." Now my favorite thing to do is sleep. I love my bed. But there is still an urgency.

The things that are on my list are not, say, going to Paris. They are making sure my kids understand life, that their husbands understand life, and that as soon as the grandkids can understand, I have some level of relationship with them. The one we have now, Brayden, is thirteen months old and has red hair. When I was a kid, other kids used to say cruel things about red hair — I didn't say that, the other kids did. But I've always thought red hair was really cool, and I never understood what a point of conversation it would be until he had it. His mother Haley finally got tired of the comments and had a t-shirt made that says, "It's a recessive gene." Everybody wants to talk about this red hair.

I don't really care about his red hair — I want him to know the scripture. I think I need a relationship with him to make that happen, and the cutest thing has developed. When I now hand him back to his mother, he cries. That is a good thing. Those are the things I care about. I don't need to see Paris — I have the Discovery Channel. But you need to know what your list is. You need to have it.

Fighting, Finishing, and Keeping the Faith

Look at verse 7: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." Paul says he is in a battle. The way he describes it in Ephesians 6, his encouragement is this — Ephesians 6:11: "Put on the full armor of God." In the Greek, that phrase means put it on once and for all and leave it on. It is not a matter of putting it on, taking it off, putting it back on when the next battle comes. He says put it on once and for all — why? Because we are in battle twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes." He is clever, he is crafty, he is methodical, and he is out to destroy you. "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, the powers of the dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

Paul says, "I fought the good fight." Paul did not have a Pollyanna view of life — he understood what life actually is. There is a passage in 2 Corinthians 4 where he writes autobiographically: "We are afflicted in every way, there is pressure from everywhere, but not crushed. We are perplexed but not despairing. We are persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed." He is not saying that struggle does not exist, that difficulty is not real, or even that it does not hurt. But he knows that when he is weak, he is strong, because it is not him doing it — it is Christ in him.

Paul said, "I fought the good fight, I finished the race." I probably have more half-read books than anyone in this room — I am confident of that. I have them everywhere. There is something I have been wanting to do for a long time, and I am going to initiate it this week. I want to have a conference here at the church titled Finishing Strong. I already have just the right person to lead it.

I want to talk about Finishing Strong — I want those who are forty-five or fifty and older to come, but I also want those of you who are twenty to forty there, because you are not going to finish strong if you do not start strong. I don't know if there is anything more important for us than to grasp this idea of Finishing Strong. What does it mean to get control of every area of life?

Paul said he fought the good fight, he finished, he broke the tape. He did not blow out at sixty or sixty-five. He did not let the next hurdle take him down. He went over hurdle after hurdle after hurdle. He tripped over some, he fell, there was sin, there was a thorn in the flesh, there were all kinds of difficulties — but he kept going, because the race was not over. "I fought the good fight, I finished the race, and I kept the faith."

Contending for the Faith

When Paul uses the word "faith" there, he is speaking of the body of truth. Jude writes: "Certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. I had urged you to contend for the faith." Last Tuesday I had breakfast with a fellow who was part of a large denomination here in town. He had been the pastor of a church not far from here, and three or four years ago his denomination began not just sanctioning or affirming, but actually ordaining practicing homosexuals — and finally made one a bishop. He said, "That's it, I'm out." And it cost him everything — it cost him his church.

Contending for the Faith

He said this all started 40 years ago when we began to compromise on the inerrancy of Scripture. That is where it all started. Now we know that, and we say that, but here is exhibit A. I would like to find a way to bring him in — maybe on video — and let him talk about the pain of this. When we talk about contending for the faith, do you see what Scripture says? "For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you." The enemy is not the ACLU, the liberal left, the radical right — that is all part of the deal, but that is not what contending for the faith is talking about.

What it is talking about is this: denominations begin saying, "Well, what he really meant was..." or "That was all cultural," and so it starts with one or two issues where Scripture gets set aside. Before long — sometimes it takes longer than other times, but in this man's case it took 40 years — the pastors, priests, and leaders in his church had become literal universalists. That is what they had become. And it all traces back to not contending for the faith. It is a sobering and wonderful truth.

Anticipating the Return of Christ

There is one last thing that ought to shadow everything else, and that is anticipating the return of Christ. Look at verse 8: "In the future there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, not only me but also all who have loved His appearing." There is a day coming when I will meet Jesus face to face.

I was saved in 1980, and Hal Lindsey was popular, and there was tremendous excitement about the return of Jesus. My mentor, Larry Wright, got hold of a little pamphlet — and I am going to make up the details, but the idea is real — that said Jesus was coming on September 19th at 11 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, 1982. Larry really got into it, full bore. He said to me, "Tom, this is compelling, the scriptural stuff — do you want to read it?" I said, "Not really. I have that verse about nobody knowing the day or the hour, so I can almost guarantee it is not September 19th, 1982 at 11 o'clock Eastern Standard Time — but maybe it is, and you know better than me."

Well, Larry was so into it that I thought there must be something there. So on that morning, I am at my desk, watching the clock — 10:59 — thinking, all right, get everything set, I am out of here. Then the phone rings. I pick up and I am swept into a negotiation on a deal. I hang up and look at the clock — it is 11:07. I stood up and looked around, and the two Christian guys from the nearby cubes were gone. They were nowhere to be found. So I called Larry's number. No answer. I thought, "Oh my goodness — Father, I am a sinner, something is not right here." And about that time, those guys came walking out. They had simply gone to get a cup of coffee.

The point is this: ever since Jesus ascended into heaven, believers have expected His return. Paul is writing 1 Thessalonians and dealing with exactly this question in the early church. Why did God leave it so vague? I will tell you why — so that you would live as though He could return at any moment, on any day.

Practical Goals for the Coming Year

Let me give you something concrete to work on for the next year. The first area is improving relationships — specifically, a level of genuine intimacy with someone other than your spouse, if you are married, or someone of the same gender if you are single. A real friend.

Look at the very letter we have been studying, 2 Timothy, from the beginning. Paul writes: "To Timothy, my beloved son: grace, mercy, and peace." I cannot read past that without stopping. Paul has a wish for Timothy, and his wish is grace, mercy, and peace. I just ask you this — is that the same wish you have for your children? I do not tend to think that way. I tend to think of health, wealth, education, or a good job. But Paul says, here is what you need more than anything else: grace, mercy, and peace — and here is where you will find it, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul then continues: "I thank God whom I serve as my forefathers did with a clear conscience. Day and night I constantly remember you in my prayers." Notice three things here. First, he was praying for Timothy. Second, he says, "Recalling your tears, I long to see you" — reflecting back to an incident in Acts chapter 20 where Paul is saying goodbye to Timothy, and there are tears and embracing and deep intimacy. Third, he knew Timothy's family: "Reminded of the sincere faith which was first lived in your grandmother and your mother and now I am persuaded lives in you."

You need that kind of relationship. You need someone around you who knows you that deeply — more than an acquaintance, more than someone to play golf with.

your schedule. Maybe you're enslaved to a relationship. Maybe you're enslaved to an opinion of someone else or the approval of someone else. The point is, God has bought you at a price, and to go back into slavery of any kind is to waste that freedom.

The Gift of Meaningful Relationships

My favorite rounds of golf are when we tee off in the summer. It is about 115 degrees, and it will be just the two of us. We get a cart, hit a ball, get back in the cart, and start talking about something that has nothing to do with golf, nothing to do with the club or the care of the green, but has everything to do with life. You have to have that. There has to be people in your life with whom you have that kind of relationship.

You need to communicate with them, write to them. I opened my email this morning, and it is almost every Sunday the same thing. Who is it from? Neil. Almost every Sunday morning: "Hawks didn't look bad. They were respectable" — meaning we got killed yesterday — "Hope you're doing well. Miss you so much." You have to have that kind of relationship. You need to have those conversations, be praying for people, and visit them.

One of the great things about going to the hospital is that it connects you to people in ways you never plan. Susan had a biopsy a couple of weeks ago, and it was a long one, so she was in there for a while. I got a mocha and started walking through the hospital, into all these areas marked "Do Not Enter" — but they never say anything to you. And I ran into Dave Cotier. None of it was planned.

Then a lady from our church stopped me. I did not know she works there. She works in infant oncology, and she introduced me to a woman whose two-month-old was born with cancer and is in chemotherapy. Then I came around the corner and ran into our oncologist — someone I never get to talk to outside of the exam room. He and I stood there for ten or fifteen minutes talking about Christmas and his family, everything other than cancer and chemotherapy and drugs and nutrition.

He is a vegetarian, so I listen to his lectures on hamburger periodically. I told him, "You are really making it difficult. The last three times after you have talked to me, I have gone to the cafeteria and had a salad, and this is awful. You are killing me here." But I love that it all happens — the visit, the stop, the running into someone at the mall. It all connects.

Unexpected Encounters, Unexpected Ministry

We were at the bookstore the other day, and I ran into Paul and Karen Honeycutt. I had no idea how long it had been. I came around the corner, and there was Paul. I talked to him for about ten minutes and asked, "How is Karen doing?" He said, "She's trying to learn to cook. She's over in the cooking section." So we went over, and Karen asked, "How's Susan?" I said, "Well, she's sitting down — we were just getting ready to go for our first chemo."

She said, "Can I talk to her?" So we went over, Susan said, "Why don't you sit down," and we ended up having a conversation for an hour. Karen kept asking Susan question after question. Walking out, Susan said, "She kept asking all those questions." I said, "That is exactly the way God uses that." Karen had nobody to talk to. She wanted to know: What does cancer feel like? What do you think about the kids? How is Tom doing? Are you afraid?

You have to have somebody in your life to walk through those things with you. And you have to be that person for someone else.

Do Not Become a Slave to Men

We have to be careful about something, though. 1 Corinthians 7, verse 23 says, "You were bought at a price. Do not become slaves of men." We sing a song here with the line, "You'll never know how much it costs to see my sin upon that cross." I will never fully get it. Jesus paid an extraordinary price — a price you could not pay — for your sin. Paul says you have been freed from the bondage of sin. You are free. Do not enslave yourself to man.

What does that mean? MacArthur's footnote is helpful. He says this refers to sinful slavery — becoming slaves of the ways of men, the ways of the world, the ways of the flesh. So here is the problem: God frees you, and then you go and enslave yourself to Bank of America. I do not say that to offend you, but think about how tragic that is.

I do not know exactly where the statistic comes from, but I hear it all the time: nine out of ten people who apply to go to the mission field never get there because of consumer debt. Think about that for a moment. Someone says, "God, I am gifted, I am called, I am ready to go" — but they have this debt. That is slavery to men. That is exactly what Paul is talking about.

Soldiers Do Not Entangle Themselves

There is a wonderful parallel verse in 2 Timothy 2:4: "No soldier in active duty entangles themselves in the affairs of everyday life, so he may please the one who enlisted him." God is saying that you and I are soldiers on active duty, and how foolish it is to entangle ourselves in the affairs of everyday life. That entanglement can take many forms — financial debt, alcohol, drugs.

Susan and I were driving by one night, and I remembered that the Drug Enforcement Task Force uses our parking lot. I had forgotten what was going on. They had arrested — I believe it was 153 people they brought in that night. I asked how many were women, because I find that telling, and they said seven. It was not too many years ago that I was on the other end of that kind of situation. I have been in that scene three times.

Those guys sitting around having a couple of drinks with their buddies, friends in from out of town over the holidays — they think that is really life. It is not life when the sheriff slams the cuffs on you. That is a terrible feeling. That is not life.

Every Form of Bondage Robs You of Freedom

Maybe you are not enslaved to drugs or alcohol. Maybe you are enslaved to sex, or to your schedule, or to a relationship, or to the opinion and approval of someone else. The form does not matter. The point is that God has bought you at a price, and to go back into any kind of slavery is to waste that freedom. He paid too much for you to live that way.

Intensifying Your Passion

It is a great year to intensify your passion. In Romans 9:3–4, Paul writes: "I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel." What he is saying is that he would give up his salvation if he could for the sake of his brothers. He understands the theology of that — he understands it is not possible — but look at the depths of his love for them.

What is your passion? What is it you care about? There are people who get frustrated at fans — those out there yelling at a football game — who will not do the same for Christ. Watching the Alamo Bowl, you could see those bright-skinned Iowans, sunburned, with half their face gold and half black, looking like they were having the time of their lives. Iowa was not invited because they are particularly good, but because they will bring all those people with them.

There is nothing wrong with being a fan. All that needs to be said is: be a fan of something more important than college football. Four thousand babies are killed today through abortion — maybe that is a passion. Maybe it is young kids who need someone, or single moms who are hurting, where a man can be the only father figure those children will ever really know.

Find that passion. Dump your life into it. Find something you are truly willing to live for, and then devote all your energy — your time, your effort, your money — into that same thing, and let it have an impact.

Expanding Your Perspective

The next step is to expand your perspective. In Philippians 1:9, Paul writes: "And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best, and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ." The goal is to abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight — to know this Word so thoroughly that it infiltrates the mind and everything is seen through that grid.

That does not mean isolating yourself from the world. It is important to understand what is going on in the culture. Watching an interview one night with Milton Friedman, he said he had just read a book that would change the world. Many Christian friends at that point would say, "Only the Bible will change the world," and click — the channel goes off. That is understood. But there is something worth hearing from someone like Milton Friedman, who is considerably smarter than most of us, about what he thinks would change the world.

He recommended a book called *The Mystery of Capitalism* by a Latin American economist named Hernando de Soto — not a book that would typically be picked up. Reading it, it became clear very quickly what Friedman saw in it: that if its principles were incorporated, especially in third world nations, the impact would be profound. That is what expanding perspective means — understanding the culture, understanding the world, and seeing how Scripture speaks into all of that.

There is a weariness that sets in from sitting in meetings where the same books are passed around, everyone talking about the same things they already agree on, over and over again. Expanding perspective means going beyond that. The doctrines of grace are very important — but there is more than that.

The Spirit's Strength When We Cannot

When confronted with these challenges, the immediate reaction is often: I cannot possibly do that. That is exactly when Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 becomes so vital: "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through the Holy Spirit." There are going to be things in life that cannot be done physically, emotionally, or intellectually on one's own — and God will come along and infuse a person with His Spirit.

Before God's saving work, the first book ever read was in the junior year of college — and it was a book on Muhammad Ali, not something assigned for a class. When God saved and transformed that life, one of the things He did was turn a non-reader into a reader. It remains slow and difficult, but it happens.

The priority must be this Word first, and things closely associated with it, so that the mind begins to understand how God speaks. God has never spoken through a passage of Scripture that was not already known. There has never been a moment where He simply said, "Here, go through this" — pointing to a passage never encountered. He speaks through what has already been stored away. He comes back and says: Do you remember what Psalm 90:12 teaches — to number our days aright? Do you remember Daniel? Do you remember the lion's den? Do you remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fire? Do you remember Daniel 3:18 — "He is my God, He can deliver me, but even if He does not"?

Removing Constraints and Stewarding Resources

He begins to work in your life. There is no way — if I could, I would, believe me — to take a bubble and put it over you and insulate you from everything in the world. And you wouldn't want that, because God doesn't want you to live that way.

You need to have some concrete things. I make the same list every year and give it to you. You need to develop a friendship with somebody, a real relationship. Get rid of something you are in bondage to — maybe it is debt.

I read this the other day: the average person spends $800 at Christmas, and most of that on a credit card. If you take $800 and put it on interest at the department store rate, and you make the minimum payment of $15 a month, it will take you something like 158 months to pay it off, and you will pay $1,600. You will pay twice as much in interest as you did on the original purchase. That is just not very prudent — not very smart for a Christmas gift.

I am not saying do not have things. I like stuff. I like nice stuff. I like this shirt — I think I look good in this shirt; it brings out the blue in my eyes. All I am saying is I cannot have my life invested in stuff. If I am going into bondage for stuff, I do not have the freedom to be the man God has called me to be.

The Question of Stewardship

Maybe you are at the other end of this. Maybe God is giving you a great deal of stuff — money and resources. God gave you that for a reason, and it is not for you to keep. The profound question we have to ask is not how much money should I give, but how much of God's money am I going to keep? That really changes the way I answer the question.

If I ask how much I should give, I get a very different answer than if I ask how much of God's money I should keep. I tend to focus a lot in this discussion on suffering and pain and hardship, but some of you are not experiencing that — at least not economically or circumstantially. God has placed you in a position where you can be a significant person through your investment of time, energy, and money in the body of Christ. It is important to do that.

Feeding a Passion and Expanding Your Perspective

It is important to remove constraints. It is important to feed a passion. It is important for you to read books. I have a man I see all the time who said, "I never was a reader until you said that." I always put the goal out: read five books this year. Some of you scoff because you read five a week. For others, that is like Mount Everest.

He said he had never read a book until I suggested five. That first year, he set a goal to read five books, and he read five books. Now every time I see him, he has a book. Every time I go to meet him — and he is always there early, which I love — he is there with a book. God has changed this man's heart through books, through information, through the Spirit of God applying the Word of God to his heart.

I have no idea where you are. If we asked what kind of life you have going right now on a scale of one to ten, some of you are threes, some of you are fours, some of you are nines. What I do know is that this kind of analysis is really helpful. It is important for you to do it on a regular basis.

The Weight of Eternal Perspective

It is important for you to understand the finiteness of time. It is important to aspire to say at the end of your life, "I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith." It is important for you to understand that Jesus is coming again. Those are all really important things.

It is important for you to develop a relationship. It is important to free yourself from bondage, to feed a passion, and to expand your perspective. Think global.

A Global Perspective on the Church

Remember the man I talked about — the one who walked away from his denomination? He had to find a bishop. His bishop is now the bishop of Rwanda. What they are discovering in his denomination is that the conservative, theologically sound, biblically accurate leadership is coming from Africa, Latin America, and Asia. They are sending missionaries to the denomination here in the States, and it all began forty years ago when they walked away from this.

Looking Ahead

Next week we are going to look at Matthew chapter five, verse 16, and we will be there two or three weeks. After that, we are going to the Gospel of John, finishing up the life of Christ chapter by chapter, verse by verse, beginning in chapter 14. We also finished the annual budget, and we will have a new number in the bulletin next week. I will give you a heads-up on that and we will talk about it a little then as well.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for the life that You bring into us. And as strange as it sounds to some, thank You for the difficulty and the hardship and the pain, because it is in that, really, that we grow closest to You. I thank You for this church — and I do not mean the buildings, though I am grateful for the buildings and grateful for the ones You are building. I am grateful for so much, but most of all for the people in this room.

We have firepower here to be salt and light all through Gilbert and Tempe and Chandler and Queen Creek and Ahwatukee and the Valley and the state and the world. God, I pray that You would raise up an army of people who are not entangled with the affairs of everyday life, but who are pursuing the desires in their hearts to serve You in a significant way. Father, for those who are here today who are hurting, who are in pain and in difficulty — maybe it is emotional —

Closing Prayer

Maybe it is financial, relational, or maybe they are just tired. I pray that You would strengthen them and remind them of the hope that they have in You, in You alone. And for those who are going, "You know what? I didn't need that today — everything is going well," Father, help them understand that this too shall pass, and that their life needs to be committed, especially in the good times, in the blessing — the time, the energy, the effort, the money, the whole life.

The very song that they sang — to surrender to You — we surrender it to You, God. Why? Because You are the master, we are the slave. You are the Lord. God, thank You for life, eternal life and physical life. We pray that we would use this life to honor You. We pray that in Jesus' name, amen. Have a great week — we will see you next week.