Year in Review: How to Have a Great 2009
Tom Shrader opens in 2 Timothy 4 with Paul's farewell words to frame a mindset of purposeful, eternal urgency as believers enter a new year. Drawing on additional passages from 1 Corinthians and Philippians, he outlines four practical areas for growth: deepening personal relationships, breaking free from enslaving habits, intensifying personal passion for meaningful work, and expanding one's knowledge of both Scripture and the surrounding culture. The teaching closes with an encouragement to bring these goals to God in prayer, trusting the Holy Spirit to supply what is beyond our own capacity.
“The quality of your year is determined by the vitality of your relationship with God as He begins to manifest Himself in your life.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Year in Review
Recorded: 2009 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 47 min
Themes: new year, purposeful living, habits, passion, relationships, scripture reading, prayer, personal growth, struggling with bad habits, feeling stuck spiritually, navigating uncertainty, new believer, young adult, seeking direction, experiencing job loss, wanting deeper relationships
Scripture: 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 2 Timothy 1:1-5, Psalm 90:12, 1 Corinthians 7:23, Romans 9:1-4, Philippians 1:9, Ephesians 3:14-19, 2 Thessalonians 4
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, eternal urgency, holy spirit dependence, spiritual disciplines, biblical literacy, eschatological mindset, pauline teaching
Full Transcript
The Mindset We Need Entering a New Year
What we want to do this morning is talk more about next year than last year. If you have Bibles, you can open them to 2 Timothy. If you don't have a Bible, the men coming down the aisles have copies — raise a hand and they will give you a copy of the Old and New Testament. When you find it, go back almost to the back of the book, to 2 Timothy chapter 4.
This is going to be an interesting year. It seems like almost everybody I talk to is saying more of the same is coming. There was an article in the paper this morning that the state of Arizona is going to be out of money in March, so I presume they will want to talk to you about that. Economically, there are going to be some challenges. Politics are interesting — we still have not settled the Senate race in Minnesota. I heard last night Al Franken has a 200-vote lead, and that has gone back and forth. There is all sorts of political uncertainty and economic uncertainty, and there is not a day that goes by that we don't hear about somebody who has lost a job, and oftentimes it is somebody who has had that job for a long, long time. Relational challenges and physical challenges are part of every year, and I don't know why this year would be any different.
What we want to talk about is approaching the new year. I can guarantee you — and I don't make many guarantees — that this can be an extraordinary year if you implement these few very simple things we are going to talk about. It is essentially what we have talked about every first of the year for the last ten years, condensed into one message. There are two points: first, the philosophy or mindset we are to have, and second, some specific areas we can work on.
I want to speak to those of you who just took communion — those of you who would say you are Christians, who have come to that point in your life where you understand that you are a sinner and have turned to Christ and to Him alone for your salvation. You are not trying to work that out or trying to be religious. You have come to Christ; you are what the Bible would call a follower, a believer. To the others, we are glad you are here. We invite you to listen and hear what could be available to you, but is not yet available until you come in repentance and faith.
For many of you — and a growing number who are new to the church — this will be fresh material. But for many of you, what Samuel Johnson wrote years ago applies: we need to be reminded more than instructed. This is very familiar territory for us this morning.
The Finiteness of Life
I want to begin with the philosophy and mindset we need as we approach the new year. 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 6 — Paul writes this:
> "I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time for my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing."
The mindset that needs to drive how we invest our time, energy, effort, money, and all of our resources — in 2009 and for the rest of our lives — must be set against the backdrop of the finiteness of life. Paul says, "I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time for my departure has come." He has a sense of immediacy about it: that he will die, and that he will die very soon. The sooner we can grab hold of that reality, the better off we are going to be.
Paul says to Timothy what Job says to us and Solomon says to us: we came into the world with nothing and we leave with nothing. Naked we came from our mother's womb. The psalmist writes it this way, and I love this — Psalm 90, verse 12:
> "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."
Help us understand the finiteness of life so we will know how to live.
Your heart has a finite number of beats. Your heart beats about 3,600 times an hour, or 86,000 times a day, or about 32 million times a year. So however many heartbeats you have left, it is 32 million fewer than you had at this time last year. I am always one who loves to be upbeat, so I checked my death clock this morning. You have options: do you call yourself normal, optimistic, or pessimistic? I went with normal. Given all things, I will die Saturday, September 9th, 2023 — I have 463,075,291 seconds left to live. If you upgrade me to optimistic, I live to Wednesday, September 30th, 2037, buying about 14 more years, with 906,739,253 seconds left to live. If you call me pessimistic, it said, "I'm sorry, but your time has expired — have a nice day." That is probably a little closer to the truth.
I could read you a list of names and ask what they have in common, but rather than play that game, I will just tell you: these are people who died this past year, and this is an abbreviated list. Bobby Fischer, the chess champion. Suzanne Pleshette. Heath Ledger. Kristin Brando. Barry Morse, who played Lieutenant Gerard in The Fugitive. The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Roy Scheider. Van Johnson. William F. Buckley. Paul Scofield. Richard Widmark. Charlton Heston. Eddy Arnold. Dick Martin. Harvey Korman. Sydney Pollack. Bo Diddley. Jim McKay. Tim Russert. Cyd Charisse. George Carlin. Jesse Helms. Tony Snow. Estelle Getty. Bernie Mac. Isaac Hayes. Johnny Podres. Paul Newman. Edie Adams. Eartha Kitt. That is just an abbreviated list. And someday you will join them. The quicker we can deal with that reality, the better off we are going to be. The finiteness of life must shape how we live.
The Urgency of Life's Limitations
The reality of life's limitations provides a healthy urgency. The faster you can get that truth into your head, keep it there, and make your decisions according to it, the better decisions you will make. Your decisions will be driven by long-term and eternal values rather than short-term or temporal values.
My grandmother was a feisty little gal — just a little pistol, a tough old bird. I would tease with her all the time, and we'd go back and forth. She was a rugged woman who never had much but made it work. One day I went back to visit her, walked in the door, threw out a jab, and realized there was nothing coming back. She wasn't going to be able to fence with me anymore.
In that moment, looking at her and seeing accurately who she was and where she was, I knew I'm headed there — but I can't see myself there. Susan and I talk about it all the time. We'll be in the mall and see an older couple sauntering through, getting a cup of coffee and splitting it, and we'll say, "That's us." But I don't fully grasp it. To the extent that I can grasp it, that gives a proper perspective to life.
Stewardship Beyond Money
When I talk about stewardship and all you think about is money, you've missed what stewardship really is. Money is a part of it — some of you have a lot, some have hardly any, and most of us have enough. But one thing we all have in common is 168 hours to invest, waste, or spend each week.
We are called to live against that backdrop of urgency — not necessarily in a dramatic way where you leave one career and start another, but simply to understand that God will use you right where you are. Today is really important. It sounds like a bumper sticker, like a cliché, but this may be the last day. I don't say that to scare you; I say it to give you perspective.
Paul's Assessment of His Own Life
Right after this, Paul gives his assessment of his life, and it's remarkable. When we talk about funerals and memorial services, there's always that moment where someone says they want to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant." But that's not actually what Paul says as he looks at his own life. What Paul says is: *"I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith."* That is his assessment.
He was able to say that, and I'm convinced it's because he lived in a purposeful, deliberate, and intentional way, understanding the backdrop of life's finiteness. He says he forgets what lies behind and presses forward — presses on toward the goal, the prize for which God laid hold of him. In other words, God saved him, and God saved you and me, for a reason and a purpose. Paul says he wants to figure out what that is, and it becomes the driving force of his life, against which everything else is measured.
The Crown of Righteousness
As if to provide a further incentive, Paul writes in verse 8: *"In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day."* If he stopped there, you might think, "Good for you, Paul" — one hand clapping. But he doesn't stop there. He continues: *"not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing."* That's you and me.
I love visiting people's offices because you learn a lot about a person from what's on the walls. So often there's a picture of someone receiving an award — maybe from the president of the company, or from a sales convention where they were recognized as the top performer in the region or the country. They're proud of it, and rightly so — it came from the boss. But consider this: you are going to receive an award from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself — the crown of righteousness.
Comfort for Difficult Times
As you head into 2009 and the rest of your life, that is the mindset — eternal in its nature, grounded in the finiteness of life. And that is not a morbid thing. When Paul writes about Jesus coming again in 2 Thessalonians chapter 4, he describes this whole event, meeting Him in the air, and then says, *"comfort one another with these words."* These are words of comfort and encouragement to us.
I really do think — and I'm not inherently optimistic — that in the midst of these very difficult times, even as things get harder and uglier, it's ultimately going to be good. We're going to see what really matters. I have never had a Christmas when more people told me they had a great Christmas — and I've
The Good That Comes From Simplicity
I have never heard more people say, "I've had a great Christmas." I have asked that question a thousand times over the last 17 years. How was Christmas? The usual answer was: "Oh, it was a hassle. We went here, we went there." This year, all I heard was, "It was great. It was real simple. We didn't go to a lot of places. We didn't give a lot of stuff. We stayed all day in our pajamas and watched movies and hung out." We were acquainted — and reacquainted — with a very simple, legitimate way to live. Something that had crept into our lives, something we thought was really important, simply went away. And it turned out it wasn't important at all. In fact, rather than making life better, it was making it worse. Those are some of the good things that are going to come out of this season.
Four Specific Things You Can Do This Year
That is the backdrop: understanding the eternal versus the temporal. That is the mindset. Now let's look at some specific things you can do. I think I have four of them, and you could easily add dozens more. The first one brings us to 2 Timothy, so turn to the very beginning of the book.
Paul's introduction is standard. He identifies himself as the author and then names the recipient. He uses some very familiar words: *"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus."* That is who Paul is. Then: *"To Timothy, my beloved son: grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord."*
We could spend a long time unpacking just those first two verses, and we are not going to do that today. I want to work through the first five verses and make the point that what you want to do this year is increase a personal relationship. But notice what is already here: Paul writes to Timothy as his beloved, or dear, son. You could easily assume that was his biological son. It is not. There is a spiritual connection — Timothy is a son in the Lord — and woven into that greeting is a wonderful wish.
What Do We Really Wish for the People We Love?
What do you wish for your kids, your grandkids, your friends, or even one another? I used to work in an office, and one of the girls was getting married. It was time — customary procedure — to make a small donation, which I don't mind. I would rather give three times the amount if I didn't have to sign the card, because I never know what to say. I always struggle. I try to see what others have written and do some kind of hybrid. Well, the person who signed the card right before me had written: *"On this special day, I wish you all the world has to offer."* I thought, what a strange wish — hurricanes, famine, pestilence, locusts. No, I was not going to write that.
Think about how we wish for people right from the beginning of life. When a baby is coming, what do you want — a boy or a girl? "We don't care. Just healthy. Ten fingers, ten toes." So the baby arrives, ten fingers, ten toes. But after a very short period of time, it suddenly does matter how tall they are, how gifted they are. We lied. And then we start to have all these wishes for them — that they get an education, that they find a mate. I remember one of my daughters could not have been more than two or three weeks old when a little grandmother came up and said, "Have you started praying for a spouse for her?" I was very gracious in my response, but what I thought was: what if God doesn't want her married? We just assume all these things.
Paul says, "I have a wish for you, Timothy," and it has nothing to do with finding a job, a school, or a spouse. Those are all good, and we hope things work out one way or the other. But here is what he says he wishes: grace, mercy, and peace. Unmerited favor. God not exercising His appropriate judgment on you. And peace — not the absence of turmoil, but peace from the presence of God. And he names the source: *"from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord."* That is the only place you are going to find those things.
That should be our deepest wish for our children. We understand all the other things. But more than anything, we should wish that they would grow deep in their love for God and who He is, and for Jesus His Son, and that they would be filled with the Spirit. We should wish that they would find a peace in their lives that they are only ever going to find in a right relationship with God — because they are not going to find it by simply getting things.
I was talking to a young man the other day who had just graduated, and I asked how the job market was looking. A little thin, he said. I asked what his major was — anthropology, English literature minor. I asked if he was headed to grad school, and whether he wanted to teach. He said he didn't like teaching. I thought, what were you thinking when you signed up for this? We wish all these things for people, but they are not going to find peace that way. You have already broken that illusion — the illusion that says, "If I just get that one thing, I will be happy." Grace, mercy, and peace. That is the wish.
A Faith Passed Down Through Generations
*"I thank God, whom I served with a clear conscience the way my fathers did, as I constantly remember you in my prayers. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I might be filled with joy."* Paul is most likely referring back to the time he said goodbye to Timothy and the elders at Ephesus, recorded in Acts chapter 20. Then he continues: *"I have been reminded that sincere faith was first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am..."*
The Importance of Deep Relationship
Paul has a kind of reputation as a stoic, distant, removed figure. But there is a great deal of intimacy you sense in his letter to Timothy. He calls Timothy "my dear son." He recalls the times they were tearfully separating — the book of Acts describes them hugging and weeping. He knows Timothy's mother and grandmother. It is a total side note, though I will come back to it next week, but it is really sad that he mentions mom and grandma with no mention of any male figure in Timothy's life at this point. You have to ask where dad and grandpa are.
Someone the other day — I think it was Luke — was asking me, if you could start the church all over again, what things would you emphasize? I said I'm convinced that the key, both in starting out and in maintaining leadership and especially in developing men, is that men need to be men and they need to lead like men. That is not some authoritative, hateful, spiteful, restrictive way of thinking. It is in a loving, kind, and gentle way.
I know from talking to the people who work with your kids in children's ministry that the most powerful tool in that classroom is a male figure. If you take a classroom with four-year-olds and drop a man into it, it changes the entire tone just by his presence, and it begins to send a message. Last week we started studying 1 Samuel, and one of the first people we meet is Eli, whose boys are all screwed up. So come back next week, and I will use ten points from an old friend of mine, Larry Wright, who once gave a talk called "Ten Things Guaranteed You Can Do to Screw Your Kid Up." If you want to raise a failure, we will cover those ten things.
You Need Deep Friendships
All of that is secondary. The main point is that Paul had a deep relationship with Timothy, and you need that kind of relationship with others. You need a close friend — not somebody who just sent you a card. I love Christmas cards. I love to get them, I love the Christmas letters, and I read every one of them, some of them a time or two. But I would not for a second say that the stack of cards we received over the last three weeks are from my friends. They are from people who know me and whom I know — acquaintances, some of them a little more than that.
You need deep friendships. For those of you who are married, there may be a flinch at that — "well, she's my best friend" or "he's my best friend." Even so, guys, you need another guy you can talk to, and gals, you need another woman you can talk to.
Four Ways to Build and Maintain Friendship
How do you get a friend, maintain a friend, and keep a friend? There are four things we see in Paul's life.
The first is that he writes to them — he communicates. I don't know if you saw the games yesterday, but when ESPN was doing their NFL warm-up show, they had a special on Peyton Manning. Peyton has been handwriting letters to players he faced who are now retiring, and they interviewed these guys and had them read the letters. It was a wonderful five or six-minute story. They talked about how blown away they were that Peyton took the time to write — not email, not text, but write. When they spoke to Peyton, he said there was something about a handwritten letter. He said even in high school, when he would get recruiting letters, he would lick his finger and run it across the signature to see if he could smear it — to find out whether the coach actually took the time to sign it. There is something powerful about holding something that was written by hand.
The second thing is also right there in the text: "I constantly remember you in my prayers." If you want to develop a personal, deep relationship with somebody, start praying for them. That will keep them fresh in your mind and will connect them to you and you to them.
The third thing we see in Paul's life — especially in the second missionary journey, where he says, "Let's go back and see how those people are doing" — is face-to-face contact. One of the things I have been working on is carving out time in my schedule to spend more face-to-face time with a certain group of people I want to go deeper with, in terms of understanding them and developing relationships. You cannot do it without face time — unfettered, almost unlimited, grab-a-cup-of-coffee-and-sit-and-talk time.
The fourth thing that really connects people, and that amazes folks when they experience it, is networking — not networking to sell vitamins, but genuinely connecting people to each other. I wanted to meet with Kimmel and talk through some things, and when I did, he said, "You need to call so-and-so," and handed me the number. I said, "Well, what am I going to say?" He said, "Just call him." So I have been waiting through the holidays, and tomorrow I am going to call this guy and say, "Hey, Kimmel told me to call you." I have enough faith and confidence in Tim to know he knows what he is doing. That is how you develop and maintain relationships — you need a person like that in your life.
Moving Forward: First Corinthians 7
Here is the next thing. Turn to First Corinthians — moving to the left through Galatians and Ephesians — First Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 23. We are going to cover three more things in the time we have left, and it is going to be great advice for having a great year.
Increase Your Freedom
First Corinthians 7:23 says, "You were bought with a price, don't become slaves of men." Those of us who are followers of Christ were purchased with His blood. Never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross. Christ died and He gave us freedom — freedom from the consequence of sin, freedom from the bondage of sin, and freedom from the uncertainty of death. I have added to that in the last few years: freedom to be the person God made you to be.
I have become more and more appreciative of the fact that God made us different. Five people who are godly can look at the same thing and have five very different perspectives on it. God didn't give any one person all of the spiritual gifts. He gave us each one, and some perhaps a little more in one area than another, but He left it so that we desperately need one another. There is a uniqueness to life, and to be free to be who God made you to be is a profound gift.
The key is this: you were bought at a price. He bought your freedom, so stay free. Paul says it this way in 2 Timothy 4, "No soldier in active duty entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life."
What are those things, if any, that have you enslaved? We can run down the list — food, sex, drugs, booze, stuff. Maybe you are enslaved to the opinions of others and it matters so much what they think about you, even though you have told your kids that if everybody else jumped off a bridge, that doesn't mean you should too. What are those things that just have you? You know what they are.
This is the year to begin the process of cutting loose. Some of them can happen very quickly; some will take time. If it is a debt issue, it may take a few years to work your way out, but you begin the process now. For me, December 11th of 2008 was my 28th anniversary of not having a drink. It was driven more by necessity than anything else. I realized that when I drank, I ended up in jail, and that hurt the ministry. So I said, this is out of control, this is not good. What are those things in your life? Some are obvious, like that one. But maybe it is a decision driven by pride — subtle, but real. This is the year to begin cutting loose of those things.
Intensify a Passion
The third thing is this: it is the year to intensify a passion. In Romans chapter 9, verses 1 through 4, Paul essentially says, "I love my brothers, the Jews, and if it were possible, I would give up my salvation so that they could be saved." He understands that is not possible, but what an amazing portrait of passion and love and care for people.
One of the great fears I have as I look at us as a nation is that we have lost a passion. We have a motto that says "In God We Trust," and a flag and a national anthem. But if I were to select a color that captures the heart and spirit, mind and soul of the American people, my fear is that it is beige. We don't even sin with vigor anymore.
I enjoy a limited number of statistics, and there is one that points to the doom of the United States of America. It has been this way for about five years now: fifty percent of the kids who enter high school never graduate. In a world that is becoming highly competitive, fifty percent of your adult population is going to have no high school degree at all.
In a recent survey, forty-seven percent of high school seniors responded that there is nothing they would die for — not family, not friends, not faith, not anything. I know it sounds like a bumper sticker, but some of the reason certain phrases are so familiar is because they are true: if there is nothing worth dying for, there is nothing worth living for. So why wouldn't a student become blasé and decide around sophomore year not to make the commitment it takes to finish high school?
How did they get this way? Let me introduce you to their parents. How are you doing? Fine. How was your day? Fine. What's new? Nothing. I bet that is inspiring. I bet that just rallies the kids around you. What is it that lights you on fire? I am not asking you to be phony — not at all. I am not asking you to fake this. If you are one of those people who is instinctively pretty even-keeled, the stereotypical flat-liner — though that is not true across the board — and you walk in tomorrow saying, "Boy, I am really excited to be here with you," that is not going to work. Something would seem very wrong. I am not talking about faking it. I am talking about something that is genuinely inside you. And this may take some work, but it is there.
Expanding Your Passion
Your heart breaks for something. Maybe it breaks when you see a young girl with an unwanted pregnancy and no guy around. If so, head on over to Crisis Pregnancy Center — it's one of the great organizations on the planet. Maybe you want to work with kids in school; Young Life is there, and you can get a hold of Chris Amaro. There's a whole world around you and options everywhere.
What is that passion? Fifty percent of kids are dropping out of high school — maybe it's tutoring, maybe it's linking up with the schools. Here's what we learned this year from talking to the mayors and leaders in the community: they are waiting for you and for us to come. There are spots all over if you'll step up.
When we did Hot Summer Nights, we had the mayors in there. The mayor of Tempe made a wonderful point. He said, "I'm sure many of you are very critical of your government — city, state, local. I'm sure you're very critical of a lot of what you see in the community. How many of you are running for office? How many of you are serving on a committee? How many of you, when asked, are voluntarily going and happy to go to jury duty?" And in essence, he said: then quit whining. That was a wonderful point.
Expanding Your Perspective
This is the year to expand your perspective. Turn to the book of Philippians, and Paul is going to talk to us especially about growing in the knowledge of God's Word. Philippians chapter 1, verse 9: "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, you may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ Jesus, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God."
Paul says this is his prayer — that you would grow in knowledge, depth, insight, and wisdom, that you would become students of the Word. You would expect to hear that at East Valley Bible Church. We would tell you it is important to study and understand this Word, and I don't in any way want to distract from that. We should have an ongoing, continuing, lifelong process where we go to God and He unfolds His infinite mind to us the best that we can discern it, as the Spirit takes His Word and applies it to our heart.
But I want to suggest to you that it is also important to understand the culture and the times in which you live. There is a whole world changing in a radical way, and if you don't change with it, you will quickly be irrelevant — no matter how relevant your message is. I was watching Billy Graham Classics the other night, from the McCormick Center in Chicago, Illinois, 1962. It is totally dated. The message isn't — you'd need to change some illustrations — but the packaging is irrelevant. Nobody connects that way anymore. You need to understand the world around you.
Let me be really honest with you here. I am the guy who predicted that the computer was a fad. I'm not yet willing to admit I'm wrong, but the data is starting to stack up against me — big pile on the other side. You know why I said that? Because I didn't understand it, I was afraid of it, and rather than confront it, learn it, and deal with it, I said it'll go away and I'll pretend it never happened. That is wishful thinking, and it doesn't work.
The world is changing, and you can sit and moan and groan and complain about it, or you can get with it and understand the world the best you can so that you can be a vehicle God uses to communicate within this culture. For too long we've been sitting in a room passing the same books back and forth, reading the same things, nodding our heads, and saying aren't we smart and everybody else is stupid.
Putting It Into Practice
This is a great year to read a book or two written by authors who are dealing with a subject you're very interested in but who have a very different perspective on it. This is a really important year to make sure you have four, five, or six people in your life who don't share your understanding of Christ and who He is, so that you can participate in their lives. You have the answers to their questions.
It's also an important year to understand the world you've just lived in. I remember years ago watching an interview with Milton Friedman in which he said he had just read a book that would change the world. I had two paths. I could have said, "The only book that will truly change the world is the Holy Bible" — and that's true. But I thought it would be really interesting to see what Milton Friedman said would change the world. It was a book written by an economist from South America, and it contained some wonderful things. I finished it, talked to Aspen about it, and had Barry explain certain parts I didn't understand. The author was basically talking about certain conditions in developing countries that, if put in place, would transform those countries. You need to be engaged in that whole process.
Beyond Our Own Strength
We've talked about developing a relationship, increasing freedom, intensifying passion, and expanding knowledge. You can add to that list or even take slightly from it. But either way, the sense you begin to feel is: I can't do all of that. That is so much — it's beyond me. That is actually a very good place to be.
Let me read to you what Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 3: "For this I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in heaven and earth derives its name. I pray that out of His riches He might strengthen you with power through"
The Power to Pray About Everything
"His Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you will be rooted and established in love, that you may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is Christ's love. And to know that this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to a measure of fullness of God." Here is what Paul is saying: you have the power in you — the power of the Holy Spirit — that you can pray about. Does it sound silly to pray, "God, give me a friend"? I hope it doesn't sound silly to you, because He says to pray about everything.
I was never a reader. I got through college without ever reading one book — I was very smart, but I sat next to really smart people, and that was the key. I took tutoring to a new level; that was my strategy. I'm not proud of that, I just did it. When God saved me, it became clear that reading was important, and I remember praying, "God, You're going to have to make me a reader."
To this day I am a very, very slow reader, which is genuinely hard. But I prayed, "God, help me be a reader, and help me retain and connect the things I read, because these are going to be really important." Does that sound silly — to pray about something like that? It isn't. God, intensify a passion.
Praying Through What God Has Put on Your Heart
I have spent the last three weeks — really, the last six months — asking myself, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? About five of you have asked whether I am retiring, which is an interesting question, and I think it's probably because I haven't taught the last three or four weeks. It has nothing to do with that; it's just the schedule and the way the guys divide it up.
There are two things I want to make sure I am doing. I want to make sure I am teaching at East Valley Bible Church, and I want to make sure I am teaching at Poverty Living — those are really important. But I am wondering whether there isn't something beyond that, something God has put on my heart that I can't fully identify yet — something that wouldn't take me out of either of those things, but something bigger.
I have these pieces and they don't quite fit together yet, and I am praying, "God, will You do that? Show me. Show me the things I need." I have 59 years of life; there is some value in that — let's see what we might do with it. And that is exactly the same kind of prayer you should be bringing to God.
Practical Goals for the Year Ahead
So I can give you these goals — you know what they are. Find a friend. Free yourself from a passion that is holding you back. Free yourself from some kind of restraint. Start to read. The number I use every year is five books. Now for some of you, five books in a month is nothing; for others, five books is Mount Everest — so figure out what is right for you.
One of the things that genuinely makes me smile is how many men have come back to me and said, "I am a reader today because of this lesson where you challenged me." They knew they couldn't read five books, but they knew they could read three, and now reading has become a constant part of their life. You should be reading every day — five pages, ten pages, fifteen pages, whatever it is, every day.
Because you have a finite amount of time to read, it is really important that you are thoughtful about what you choose. You can't afford to read merely good books anymore; you have to read the great ones. One of the wonderful tools we have in the bookstore is not just the books themselves, but the people in there who can help you identify what is really worth your time. You can take any recommendations and add to that list whatever else you want.
Finishing 2008 and Beginning 2009 Well
Did you carry regrets out of 2008? I did — there are a couple of things I regret. But I am not in bondage to those. They are done, and as I press forward I am asking God to keep fresh in my mind the backdrop to all of this: the finiteness of life, and within that, the specific things God is calling me to.
It is going to be an incredible year, and there are going to be hardships and difficulties — count on it. Some of those challenges will go well beyond anything we experience together as a congregation. You may face personal challenges that never show up on anyone else's radar screen. It could be the year the scan comes back and the doctor says, "I'm sorry, but there's a spot and there's nothing we can do." All sorts of challenges are possible.
But those challenges do not determine whether you had a good year or not. The quality of your year is determined by the vitality of your relationship with God as He begins to manifest Himself in your life.
Looking Ahead
Next week we are going to begin our study in 1 and 2 Samuel, so you can start reading ahead. There are all sorts of great truths about the sovereignty of God in those books. It is a book about God and about God's people, and the stories are as fresh today as they have ever been.
Father, help us see these incredible truths and apply them to our hearts. God, I pray that we would be men, women, students, and children who take seriously the call to follow You. I pray for those who are here this morning — those who are rejoicing, that we could rejoice with them; those who are hurting, that they might feel comfortable coming forward and praying with the pastors at the front of the conference center and here in the chapel. God, I pray for the ladies tomorrow in Continuum — it sounds like such an important and practical time for them. As we enter this new year, God, I pray that we would immerse ourselves in a relationship with You, that we would fall deeper in love with You, so that we would be able to discern what is best and pure. We ask it of You in Christ's name, Amen.