Year in Review: How to Make 2010 a Great Year
Tom Shrader opens his annual Year in Review message by grounding listeners in 2 Timothy 4:6-8, where Paul's farewell words — fighting the good fight, finishing the race, and keeping the faith — serve as a framework for evaluating the past year. He challenges the congregation to steward life wisely in light of its finiteness, anticipate Christ's return, and assess character rather than reputation. The second half turns practical, offering five areas for growth in 2010: improving relationships, increasing freedom in Christ, intensifying personal passion, expanding perspective through Scripture and the wider world, and relying on the Spirit's strength rather than one's own.
“If you're going to say that at the end of your life, you're going to have to make that determination now to live that way. That is a conscious thing that you are going to have to put into your life.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Year in Review
Recorded: 2010 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 50 min
Themes: new year, goal setting, finishing well, life purpose, spiritual growth, relationships, time management, passion for god, feeling stuck spiritually, starting a new year, mid-life reflection, long-time believer, struggling with motivation, parent, young adult, seeking direction
Scripture: 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 2 Timothy 4:7, 2 Timothy 4:8, 2 Timothy 1:4, 2 Timothy 2:4, Psalm 90:12, Ecclesiastes 7:2, Ephesians 6, 1 Corinthians 7:23, Jude 1, Romans 9:3, Philippians 1:9, Ephesians 3
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, eschatology, christ's return, stewardship, spiritual disciplines, holy spirit dependence, perseverance of faith
Full Transcript
Introduction: Why We Review the Same Truths Every Year
This is something we have done now for 13 or 14 years. It used to be something we did over two weeks, but by popular demand, we have tailored it back to one. I take a ton of abuse this time of year from my family. My daughters all tell me they could teach this lesson, they have heard it a billion times, and why not something new? I take them back to Samuel Johnson, who said we need to be reminded more than instructed.
I am all for new information, but I think it is important for us to go back to certain things over and over again. I am reading a book right now on why the mighty fail — it is about corporations that fail. Jim Collins, who wrote *Good to Great*, takes five steps he sees in the failure of a corporation, and one undercurrent is getting away from core values and core principles. There is nothing wrong with expanding, but expanding outside of those core things leads to ruin. The same can be true for us.
Many of you have been in Sunday school class since you were a little kid, and you have heard all of this a thousand times. You can make a tragic error if you think, "I have heard that, I do not need to hear it again." We need to hear these things over and over again, and we simply need to ask God to open our ears to hear them more clearly and, above all, to apply them to our lives. That is the goal here.
The Finiteness of Life
Open your Bible to 2 Timothy chapter 4. Look at verse 6, where Paul gives us the context of this letter. He writes, "I am already being poured out as a drink offering. The time for my departure has come." The backdrop of this letter is Paul understanding that he is close to dying — close to being executed.
If we can take this finiteness of life and somehow move it from something we know intellectually to something we truly believe, it will inevitably change the way we live. The psalmist writes in Psalm 90, verse 12, "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." In other words, help us understand the finiteness of life so we will know how to live those limited days we have.
Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 7, verse 2, "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man, and the living should take this to heart." Eugene Peterson paraphrases that verse this way: "You learn more at a funeral than in a feast." Your heart beats roughly 3,600 times an hour, or 86,000 times a day, or about 31 and a half million times last year. Whatever the total number of beats in your heart may be, the number is 31 and a half million less than it was this time last year. That is your future, and it is clear: we are all going to die.
A Year in Review: Those Who Passed in 2009
One of the things I love about this annual review is being reminded of who died during the year — and there is always a long list. John Updike, James Whitmore, Paul Harvey, Ricardo Montalban, Ron Silver, Natasha Richardson, Dan Seals of England Dan and John Ford Coley, Dom DeLuise. June was a particularly heavy month: Coco Taylor, David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Gale Storm, Billy Mays, and Michael Jackson — all in June.
Then came Carl Malden, Walter Cronkite, Frank McCourt, Les Paul, Robert Novak, Don Hewitt the pioneer of *60 Minutes*, Dominick Dunne, Ted Kennedy, Jack Kemp, Patrick Swayze, Henry Gibson, Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, William Safire, Al Martino, Soupy Sales, Gene Barry, Jennifer Jones, and more. Someday your name will be on a list like this. We are all going to die — that is the reality, and we must live with it ever present before us.
Stewardship: How the Finiteness of Life Changes Everything
When you truly grasp the finiteness of life, here is what happens: you will steward your life. Now when I say stewardship, you immediately reach for your wallet because you are thinking about money. That is part of it, but stewardship is far broader than that. You will begin to look at how you spend your time, your energy, your effort, and your money — and this is not a cloud that hangs over you, but a clarifying lens that sharpens how you live every day.
Numbering Our Days
If you go to the death clock website and punch in a little bit of information, it calculates when you are going to die. If you call me normal, it says I will die Saturday, September 9th, 2023. If you call me optimistic, it's Wednesday, September 30th, 2037. If you punch in pessimistic, it says, "I'm sorry, but your time has already expired." So I'll go with normal — and what is that? Roughly 14, 15, or 16 more years. It might be 5, it might be 25. Whatever that number is, the reality is it's coming, and you would be foolish to live as though it were not going to take place.
The empirical data is overwhelming. You are not the exception to this. Consequently, the psalmist says, "Teach us to number our days aright, so we gain a heart of wisdom." And what is the opposite of wisdom? Foolishness. So if I do not number my days aright, I will be a fool.
For a long time my screen saver was that death clock — a skull staring back at me, counting down the seconds. I remember one day listening to someone on the phone, glancing over at that screen saver, and thinking, "Hurry up, man. I'm dying on this phone. Get to the point." It is not an excuse to blow people off, but it does sharpen your sense of what matters.
I remember the last time I saw my grandmother alive. She was so frail and small — I imagine she was about the size of my mother, around 4'10" or 4'11", and she couldn't have weighed 80 pounds. I remember driving away thinking: I know that is my future, but I cannot see myself there. I know that is where I am going. The faster I understand it, accept it, and live life in light of it, the more effective my life is going to be — not just efficient and successful, but the more I am going to be an instrument that God can use. You had a good year if you understood the finiteness of life, because you begin to steward your life. All of us have 168 hours this week to invest or waste, and understanding that changes everything.
Fighting the Good Fight
The second thing is found in 2 Timothy 4, verse 7. Paul says, "I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith." You had a good year if your victories exceeded your defeats. "I fought the good fight" implies that you are in a battle. You have an enemy.
When we get to chapter 6 in our study of Ephesians, Paul writes, "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes." We often ask where you put on armor, and our tendency is to think: put it on, fight the battle, then take it off, and when the next battle comes, put it on again. But the Greek in Ephesians 6 is put on once and for all and leave on the full armor of God.
I recently came across a television show called Pawn Stars, where people bring remarkable items into a pawn shop. One man brought in a Navy-issued knife from World War II. The expert confirmed it was authentic, but the handle was not original. He explained that in down times, soldiers would often customize their gear — removing the original handle and replacing it with one that suited them better. That image stuck with me when I think about the armor of God, because there is never a down time in the spiritual battle we face.
You are in a battle that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with an enemy that never rests and is out to destroy you. There is never a time you are not under attack — by Satan, by his demons, by the world, by your flesh, by your desires. The constant struggle is all around us, even as followers of Christ. Paul says our struggle is not against flesh and blood, not against what we see. It is a spiritual battle that we fight, against a devil who is clever, crafty, and cunning.
Finishing Stronger Than You Started
You had a great year if your victories exceeded your defeats — if you finished the race and broke the tape, if you were stronger on December 31st than you were on January 1st. I am not a Pollyanna type of person. I understand the Christian life is not a steady, unbroken upward curve from the moment you come to Christ. There are times you move forward and then fall back, times the line goes up and then scales down. But you had a great year if it is trending up. If you finished strongly. Because there is never a finish line.
The Finish Line
The finish line is death. There is no finish line before that. There is never a time you check out, never a time when you say, "I've had enough. I've done this enough. I'm done." No. "I fought the good fight. I finished the race." And look at verse 7 again: "I kept the faith."
Now this is a little technical, but it is not very complicated to understand. Paul uses the definitive article here. He does not use a personal pronoun. He does not say "I kept my faith" or "our faith."
Contending for the Faith
Turn back to page 189 in the Bible we gave you. It is Jude. Someday you may say, "I'm feeling very spiritual — I'm going to read a book of the Bible tonight." Jude is a good one because it is one chapter, so you can power your way through it.
Jude chapter 1: "Dear friends, although I was eager to write to you about the salvation we share" — so his intention was to talk about God's grace, His mercy, and its implications in our life — "I felt I had to write to you and urge you to..." The word translated there is "contend." It is the same word translated "struggle" back in Ephesians 6. It is the grappling, the wrestling, the hand-to-hand combat. "To contend for" — there is the phrase again — "the faith." This body of truth was entrusted once for all to the saints. This faith, this truth, was given and passed on. Jude is talking about contending for the faith entrusted to you.
Identifying the Enemy
"For certain men..." — now here is the enemy. Jude is going to identify him. If you read my mail and emails, you would think the enemy is the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the liberal left, and all the others. You would think the enemy is the media, out to get us — the culture war. No. Jude says the enemy is not out there. He is in here. "For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you." They are here — in pulpits, Sunday school classes, seminaries, writing books, teaching, hosting television and radio shows.
How do you identify them? They change the grace of God. They do two things: they turn it into license, and they deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign Lord. They come along and say, "Because you've been saved, you now have license to do whatever you want." There is always a tension in that, is there not? We understand that we are saved by God's grace — saved by God, from God, for God. Our relationship with Him is unbreakable. If I am a Christian, there is nothing that can separate me from Him. But that has never been an excuse to say, "Boys will be boys. I'm only human. I can live any way I want." These teachers begin to excuse sin, and then they begin to tamper with the deity and the sovereignty of Christ. They say, "He was an amazing role model. He was quite a teacher. His death on the cross, while it really didn't accomplish much — essentially impotent as it relates to salvation — was a great role model. He certainly showed us sacrificial love." Jude says to watch out for these men. When you begin to tamper with the core of the gospel, everything is at stake.
Character, Not Reputation
Now put those together. Paul says, "I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith." This is Paul's assessment of his own life, not someone else's. We talk all the time about wanting to hear at our funeral, "Well done, good and faithful servant." People will stand around and say he was great. But that is not what is happening here. Paul is speaking of his own life — "I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith" — and he is not talking about his reputation. He is talking about character. Those are two very separate things.
Reputation is what people think of you. Character is who you are. People are going to misunderstand you, confuse you, and not really know you. They can think you are excellent when you are not. This is very important. Paul, at the end of his life, made this assessment of himself: "I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith."
Making the Determination Now
Here is the obvious question: would you not love to be able to assess your own life that way? Of course. Here is the secret. If you are going to say that at the end of your life, you are going to have to make the determination now to live that way. It must be a conscious decision you put into your life — a target, a goal. You are not simply going to wake up at the end of your life and say, "That was amazing. I fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith. I don't know how that happened." That is not how it works. There is a deliberate way.
Longing for His Appearing
You had a good year if you grasped that. Let me give you one more, right there in verse 8 of 2 Timothy. In 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 8, Paul writes: "which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, and not only me but also all who have longed for His appearing."
You had a wonderful year if you anticipated the return of Christ. I grappled until the very end of this year over what to talk about on Christmas Eve, and what finished second was a message built around the idea that He is coming again — but He is going to come the second time with a different attitude. He comes the first time...
He Is Coming Again
He is coming the next time as a King with judgment and reward. He is coming again. We do not know the day; we do not know the hour. At the end of Revelation, Jesus says in His own words, "Yes, I am coming soon." Many have said, "Wait a minute — He said soon, and He is not here yet." But remember that a day is a thousand years, so He has been gone like two days now.
Is that a scary thought to you or a comforting thought? Does it motivate you? You have a home, and it is not here. Someone in San Diego asked me, "Where is home for you?" I answer that question differently depending on where I am when someone asks it. If I am in San Diego, I say Phoenix. If I am in Phoenix, I say home for me is really Iowa — because I love Iowa. I love the rolling hills, the green, the Hawkeyes. Last night, one of the last things I did before going to bed was check the Iowa weather. It was nine below in Davenport. I love Iowa, but not enough to live there.
Either of those answers is technically inaccurate, because as a follower of Christ, my home is in heaven. So why would I be afraid of going there? I ought to anticipate it.
Reviewing the Five Things from 2 Timothy 4
You had a great year if your victories exceeded your defeats, if you stayed strong, finished the race, kept the faith, understood the finality and finiteness of life, and anticipated the fact that Jesus would come again. Next year, we will go through those same things again, so they ought to be part of what you plan for. Take 2 Timothy chapter 4, verses 6, 7, and 8, and internalize them — let them flow out of your life.
Now, what I want to do in the second part of this message — and this used to be two separate messages before we combined them — is to ask: what are some practical things I can do to make 2010 a wonderful year? Let me say this clearly: in spite of the political situation, the economic situation, the job market, and relationship difficulties, there is no practical reason to be optimistic. Other than the fact that Christ is coming again and you are a child of the King. Those are big things, of course — but here is what I mean: when things are really hard is precisely when spiritually we tend to do the best. We tend to have our greatest growth spurts in those times.
Improve Your Relationships
Here are some practical things you can do. Turn to 2 Timothy chapter 1, the very beginning of the book. You will have a great year if you can improve your relationships.
Paul identifies himself as an apostle and then addresses Timothy with the phrase "my dear son." This is not a biological relationship — they do not share a chain of DNA; they share a faith. I had that kind of relationship with a man named Larry Wright. Larry was the person God used in my life in a powerful way. When Larry would write to me, he would always write "Larry to Timothy," and he would close with peace and grace and love. When Larry died, he left a gaping hole in my heart that no other person can fill, because of the uniqueness of what we had. But I need people in my life — and so do you.
Paul is not some stoic, robotic man who has all his doctrine in order and needs nobody. He writes in verse 4, "Recalling your tears, I long to see you again," and just before that he says he prays night and day for Timothy and constantly remembers him. Here is what he is saying: you and I need a friend or two in our lives. There can only be one or two people with whom you can go that deep. My recommendation — and I hear it all the time — is that saying "my husband is my best friend" or "my wife is my best friend" does not count for this purpose. That is good, I am glad for it, and it serves a real role, but it is not what we are talking about here.
You need a friend — someone outside your marriage. I am absolutely convinced that a real friend is a commodity more rare than precious jewels or gold itself. A real friend is someone who will love you no matter what. It is not that they do not see your flaws; they love you anyway. They do not make excuses for you, and they have no problem saying, "Come on, let's go — we need to get that fixed."
How Paul Developed Deep Friendship
In Paul's life, as we see it in this letter alone, Paul does four things to develop this friendship with Timothy. He writes to him, he prays for him, he visits him, and he networks him — Paul is constantly moving people around and connecting them. In your life and in the body of Christ, you desperately need other people, and you need to go after them.
I will go into a small group of eight or nine people, and I will look for two or three people in that group for whom, as I get to know them—
Increasing Your Freedom
You are going to have a great year if you can increase your freedom. In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 23, Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, which is really a mess. They are all messed up, and he has been talking to them about their sin, about how they have condoned sin within the body, and how they needed to assume responsibility for their own lives. Then he gives them this one reminder: "You were bought at a price." Christ died on the cross for you. You were bought. You were freed. Free indeed. Therefore, do not become slaves to men.
Paul's basic truth is this: you were bought and freed, so why would you go and enslave yourself to man, to the world, to the things of the world, to the world's value systems? Paul said it this way in 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 4: "No soldier in active duty entangles themselves in the affairs of everyday life." Why? So he can please the one who enlisted him. No soldier in active duty — and that is you and me — gets all tangled up in this world, because we want to please the one who enlisted us.
Four Freedoms
There are four things you are free from and free to do. The first is freedom from the eternal consequence of sin. We no longer worry about our destination. It is heaven.
The second is freedom from the bondage of sin, and this is really important. It does not mean that you will never sin again or that you will stop struggling. It seems to me that almost everybody struggles with at least one big area in their life that is just really difficult. It may be gossip, lying, exaggerating, stealing, something sexual, or greed — but everybody seems to have that one thing. Yet you are free from the bondage of it, and that is what the struggle reveals. Before, there was no struggle — you just did it. Now there is a struggle in there. You are free from the bondage of sin. You are trending up. You are getting better. God is working in your life.
The third freedom is freedom from the agony of death. That is closely related to the first one — the uncertainty of what happens when you die. Death is certain, but equally certain is where you will go. When you die, you will be in the presence of God — not based on who you are, and not based on anything you have done, but based on the finished work of Christ.
Freedom to Be Who God Made You to Be
The fourth freedom is freedom to be the person that God made you to be. This is really important. The Christian faith, the Christian life, is not one size fits all. How Christ manifests Himself in your life is going to be different than how He manifests Himself in someone else's life.
We love to judge, and that is what the judging part is really about. We are not simply looking at sin in somebody else's life — we are complaining that they are not like us. We do it to ourselves, and others do it to us. Someone will come along who just really prays. They pray and they pray and they pray — that is just who they are, they are pray-ers. And the response is, "Man, I don't pray enough." Then you meet someone who is down in the Broadway corridor teaching English as a second language, doing all this service, and you think, "Man, I don't serve enough." Then you meet someone who is out picketing, and you think, "I don't picket enough." And you go through all of these things. But here is the reality: God just wired us differently. That is not an excuse to not do things, but this Christian life is not one size fits all.
This becomes clear when people offer criticism. Someone will come and say, "That church is not a friendly church — not friendly at all." And the question worth asking is: what is your gift? Hospitality. Then the next person comes and says, "You have no mercy here. People are sick and nobody is going up to the hospital." What is your gift? Mercy. Then someone says, "Tom, you have gotten liberal and easy — it is just not hard enough." What is your gift? Prophet. What is happening is that we interpret the whole world through our own giftedness, and so we think everybody ought to be like us.
You are free to be the person God created you to be. Some of you are going to get up at four o'clock in the morning and pray. Some of you are not. Some of you are going to read the Bible, mark it up, and go through the whole thing with fourteen different colored pens. Others are going to look at that and think, "That is a lot of work — I only have a blue pen." And before long, what do we do? We try to make everybody like us. But that is not the way it works.
Increase Your Freedom
God made you the way you are. Some of you come from a goofy family — there is nothing you can do about that. It is goofy, it is in you, and God gave you that for a reason. Some of you are really picky and everything has to be just right. Others of you are a little easier going.
I have two guys who have become pretty good friends of mine who are pastors, and the three of us are so different in the way we approach teaching. They both say to me all the time, "I couldn't do this the way you do it." I say, "Hey, man, I couldn't do what you do" — and I don't feel compelled to. You will have a great year if you increase your freedom. Don't entangle yourselves in the affairs of everyday life.
Intensify Your Passion
Here is the third thing: you are going to have a great year if you intensify your passion. Turn to page 124. It is Romans chapter 9. Paul is writing and he speaks here in terms of hyperbole, but he drives the point home. He says, "I speak the truth in Christ — I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit — I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel." Romans 9:3.
He is saying: I would give up my faith for my brothers and sisters in Israel. He understood that is not possible, but what I take away from that is an amazing amount of passion. Is there anything in your life that you are passionate about?
Forty-seven percent of high school seniors said there is nothing they could imagine that they would die for. That is a truly amazing statistic — not their parents, not their siblings, not their school, not their country, not their faith, not a video game, not a skateboard, not anything. Nothing worth dying for. And you know the flip side of that: if there is nothing worth dying for, there is nothing worth living for. So when you try to confront life with someone thinking that way, you should expect to hear back: "Whatever."
And it is not limited to high school students. I run into people all the time. "How are you doing?" "Fine." "Having a good day?" "Yeah." "What's new?" "Nothing." That was a scintillating conversation — I cannot wait to see you again. What are you passionate about? How does God use that passion in your life?
There was a guy I encountered while I was doing a study down in Tucson. I was teaching in a hotel — flat floor, rows of seating, like we do over here. He comes in, sits down, plops down in the fifth row, and just scowls at me the whole time. Gets up and leaves. That happened five weeks in a row. At the end of the fifth week, I finish, and he comes right up to me. I thought this cannot be good. He said, "You need to know a little bit about me." He said, "I am a Jew and I am a lawyer, and I have been here for five weeks." I said, "Well, I know — five weeks, same spot." He said, "In five weeks you have not said one thing I agree with." I had to ask him what seemed to me the obvious question: why would you come? We get up at five in the morning to do this — why would you come? Here is what he said: "I don't agree with one thing you say, but I love to watch you say it."
His life was so void of anything driven with any sort of passion that there was a traction to that. When you find your giftedness — and we will talk about that in the book of Ephesians, where God has given you a spiritual gift — when you begin to use it, when you begin to find that passion, when God begins to unleash that in your life, it is just going to be compelling to the people around you.
Now, do not put passion in a box. Some of you are very animated. Some of you are more stoic. If you are a stoic person and you walk into the office tomorrow and say, "Hey, I had a great year — this will be the best year ever, 2010!" people are going to wonder what happened to you. I am not saying fake it. I am saying be the person God made you to be. He also wired you and put these desires in your heart. What is it? Dream. Is it to write? Maybe it is to write the great American novel, even though most people will never read the great American novel. Is it to understand that babies are being killed right down the street and you want to do something about it? Is it Broadway? I do not know. But you intensify that passion. You find something — not that you would die for, that is too easy — something that you would live for. Dying for something, I do not think that is all that hard. Living for it is much more difficult, because now you have to come out of your comfort zone.
Expand Your Perspective
Here is the fourth thing: it is going to be an amazing year for you if you expand your perspective. Turn to page 152. It is Philippians chapter 1, verse 9. Paul writes this: "This is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in the knowledge and depth of insight." What he is saying is, I want you to understand the extent —
Developing Knowledge and Discernment
Develop your knowledge, your insight, your understanding, so that you may be able to discern what is best. Be pure and blameless until the day of Christ. The Amplified Bible puts it this way: "So that you may surely learn to sense what is vital and approve and prize what is excellent and of real value, recognizing the highest and the best and distinguishing the moral differences."
Reading God's Love Letter
We are certainly talking about Scripture. There is a book due out January 12th that I pre-ordered, and I got a copy of it two days ago. It is Larry Crabb's new book, "66 Love Letters." I am just beginning it, and I am struck by what I am reading.
What Larry is doing — which I think is exactly right — is taking the Bible in its totality. He is asking: you have Ezra, and you have Amos, and you have 1 Thessalonians — what do they have to do with each other? The premise of the book is that the Bible is God's love letter to you. Have you ever received a love letter, or just a letter you valued from someone? You go back to it, you treasure it, and you read it over and over again.
His premise, and I think it is a good one, is that God has written us a love letter and we are not even bothering to read it. The One whom we call Master and Savior and Lord has given us this book with 66 different chapters, different time frames, and different ideas. We are settling for too little. We are focusing on our own narrow lives rather than the story God has given us.
We are substituting — and you can easily misunderstand this — things like memorizing Bible verses, studying doctrine, and meditating on Scripture, all of which are important and necessary. No one is saying not to do those things. But we are doing them in the context of how they relate to me, rather than in the context of how God uses me in the story He is unfolding all around us. God has painted a magnificent story, and He has given it to you.
The Bible as a Whole Story
I think that is how I ended up with that book. I finished another Larry Crabb book someone had given me, and at the end were the first chapter or two of this one. I thought it was really interesting, and somehow an early copy found its way to me. I am struck by this idea.
We are East Valley Bible Church, and I would bet that most of us have never read this entire Bible. If we have, it has been a long time since we have visited some parts of it — myself included. We tend to see it in a very individualized way, as the story of God saving me, rather than as the broader story of God, mankind, and God's redemption.
It would be an amazing year if we intensified our perspective by studying His Word. Beyond Scripture, there is a world changing so quickly, with so much information — some of it useless, some of it genuinely valuable.
Embracing the Tools of Today
I am meeting an increasing number of older people — and that is becoming a very relative term to me, I mean that honestly — who are in their seventies and eighties and say they do not want any part of computers or email. But consider this: if you really want a relationship with your grandchildren, email them. My daughter and I live a mile apart, and I get text messages from her back and forth all day long. Is that better than sitting down face to face? Obviously not. But when you say you do not want any part of email because it is too confusing, consider what it actually requires: you push, you point, you click, you type. They are not asking you to build a computer; they are asking you to use one. It opens up an entire world that is out there — some of it unpleasant, but much of it good.
Strength That Comes from God
As we go through all of these things, there is a voice that says, "I cannot do that." That brings us to the final and always important point: my strength does not come from within myself — it comes from the strength God gives me. Paul writes this in Ephesians 3: "I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being." You have the power of the Spirit of God in you. Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. God will stretch you, and He will give you that strength.
Questions to Close the Year Well
Someone sent me some questions the other day — questions to ask about the new year. Some of them were ordinary, but a few struck me as genuinely helpful. Here are some things simply worth thinking about.
What is the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family this year? What is the single biggest time waster in your life, and what are you going to do about it? What is the most helpful way you can strengthen your church, and what are you going to do about it?
Whose salvation will you pray most fervently for this year? That is a great one. You could answer it right now. There is likely a person who comes immediately to mind — the one you think of and say, "I just pray God would save them." Who is that person? You can begin praying for them right now.
What is the most important way that, by God's grace, you will try to make this year different from last? What is the single thing you plan to do this year that will matter most in ten years — and then matter
Don't Waste the Year
I love those questions — not because they are some profound, hard questions where you have to read Plato and Socrates and Thomas Aquinas to figure them out. They are pretty simple. What is the one thing that is going to make your family better? What is the one thing that is wasting the most time? That list goes on and on, and those things are all connected together.
This is not about becoming a monk. It is about recognizing that your life is going to change, and making intentional choices about how it changes. What is the one thing you can do this year that will matter most in ten years? What is the one thing that will matter most in eternity? These are the questions worth sitting with.
We are going to go through this again next year, and there is no reason for you to sit there next year with a long face. Do not waste the year. Past performance does not guarantee future results, bad or good. If you had a good 2009, that does not mean you are going to have a good 2010. If you had a bad 2009, that does not mean you are going to have a bad 2010. It does not matter — what matters is what you do from here.
Looking Ahead: The Book of Ephesians
One of the things we are going to do this year, starting next week, is break apart and study — at God's pace — the book of Ephesians. Be ready. Start reading through that book now. We will not get very far the first week, but begin working your way through it.
Father, help us see this amazing truth. There are some in the room right now whose lives are doing really well, and they would love to share that with somebody. There are others who are hurting, and they too would love someone to pray with them. God, thank you for the grace and mercy that we find in You and You alone. We pray that 2010 and the balance of our lives would be something that brings honor and glory to You. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.