Year In Review

Drawing from Paul's final words in 2 Timothy 4:6-8 and supporting passages, Tom Shrader challenges listeners to move beyond surface-level New Year's resolutions and honestly evaluate their lives against eternal priorities. He emphasizes the value of time, the necessity of contentment, the call to finish the race with discipline, and the importance of holding fast to the body of Christian truth in a post-truth culture. The teaching closes with the reminder that Jesus' return and the crown of righteousness awaiting believers are the ultimate motivation for pushing through the struggles of life.

“You don't learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on your experience.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Redemption Gateway

Recorded: 2017 at Redemption Gateway

Duration: 47 min

Themes: new year, time management, contentment, finishing well, discipline, eternal perspective, truth, second coming, feeling stuck, mid-life reflection, struggling with discipline, new year planning, feeling discouraged, mature believer, parent, seeking purpose

Scripture: 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 2 Timothy 4:7, 2 Timothy 4:8, 2 Timothy 4:10, Galatians 6:3, Psalm 90:12, 1 Timothy 6:6-8, Ephesians 6, 1 Corinthians 9, 2 Corinthians 4:16, Revelation 22

Theological Themes: eschatology, crown of righteousness, perseverance of the saints, sanctification, biblical truth, pauline epistles, glorification, christian living

Full Transcript

Welcome and Setup

Happy New Year. We made it to 2017, and I am happy about it. My day started almost like it does every day, with a couple of small changes. Sandy gets up every day at 4:15, does her thing, and then goes to swim and work out. About the time she leaves is when I get up and have coffee.

For the last four weeks or so, it has been dark — the sun does not come up until 7:00 — and the Christmas tree has been lit, and it is just the coolest vibe. Today was my first day without the Christmas tree. I got up, and while preparing for this morning, I did what I beg you not to do: I checked the news. I also checked to see if there were any texts or emails I needed to look at, and I found that Luke, who is not here today, decided to tweet last night. Here is how my day started. This is Luke's tweet: "I'm kicking off the new year preaching at Redemption Peoria — so he's on special assignment — while Tom Schrader preaches at Redemption Gateway, hoping folks come and stay awake."

I do not know if he just did not clarify what he meant, but I am choosing to believe he meant come to Peoria and stay awake. Even if he meant here, at least we got half of it done — you are here — and I hope we can stay awake for the next hour or so. Luke called about a week ago and said, "On New Year's Day I need to be at Peoria — can you teach for me?" I said sure. Whenever I can say yes to that, I am going to. He said, "It's New Year's Day, so why don't you do something about the new year?" And that is where everything is coming from.

New Year's Resolutions and the Examined Life

If you go on USA Today — I use that app a lot — there are stories trending all over about New Year's resolutions. Sandy and I were out last night and ended the year with a pint of chocolate mint Baskin-Robbins ice cream, which is about as wild as I can get anymore, but it felt pretty wild. Sandy said to me — for about the third time this week — "So what are your resolutions for 2017?" They are the same ones I have had since 1968; they have not really changed much. I am going to lose weight. I am going to exercise. And there is one new one: I want to read a book a month by an author I would disagree with, because everything I read is by the same people, the same tribe — confirmation bias.

So when Luke called, I was already thinking about looking forward. But I decided instead to go back and do the classic "what kind of year was it" exercise — in this case, for 2016. It was a bizarre year in a variety of ways, and the election probably typifies it all. Rather than talk about the big national picture, though, I want to ask: what kind of year did you have? On a scale of one to ten — one being "I never want to see those four numbers in that order ever again," and ten being "I wish every year were like this" — what number would you assign to 2016? You can get there pretty quickly, in a matter of seconds.

What you may or may not realize is that when you answer that question — what kind of year was it, what kind of restaurant, what kind of movie — you unconsciously go through a series of questions. One of the things I want to emphasize as we head into the new year is that we need to live examined lives. We need to be thoughtful — deliberate, intentional, reflective. I was listening to someone the other day who said something I had heard before and, like so many things, heard, appreciated, and forgot: "You don't learn from experience. You learn from reflecting on your experience." From thinking.

I read a book not long ago called *The Thinking Life*, and I get a lot of book summaries — three hundred pages condensed to twelve. So let me give you a summary of *The Thinking Life*. It is not twelve pages, not one page, not even one paragraph. It is one sentence. Here is what the author said: you need to think. That is it. You need to think. I believe he is responding to the reality that most of our lives become so mechanical, so carried away in the flow and the busyness.

We get up and do our routine. My life is almost the same every day — Wednesday and Thursday are the only exceptions. I get up around five, have a cup of coffee, watch a little Morning Joe, check a little Fox and Friends, see what I taped from the day before, read, and then Sandy comes home. Sandy goes to boot camp at four in the afternoon — I need to be more like that — gets home at five-thirty, the house smells of boiling broccoli, we eat, we watch an episode of Blue Bloods, we go to bed, and then we get up and do it all over again. If you do not intervene, you will go with the flow. That sounds fine, as long as the flow is going where you want it to go. But to live an examined life requires that you stop and take stock. So if I asked what kind of year it was, and you said it was a seven, here are some typical inventory questions that might have gotten you there.

The Typical Year-End Questions

Did you make more money than the year before? If you made 40 grand in 2015 and 60 grand in 2016, that is going to have an impact — or flip it around. Did you get more stuff than the year before? We need to make a distinction here. You don't need to have money to get stuff. You can get a bedroom set this afternoon with no interest payments until 2020. You don't need money to get stuff — this is really important. But you do have to have money to keep it.

Maybe you improved your position, advanced your career, got your master's or your doctorate, or became licensed or recognized in your area of expertise. Perhaps you advanced your image in the eyes of your friends. If we rewind a week or two, when you walked into the Christmas party, everybody went quiet — there she is, there he is, there they are — and you loved that. Or if you are on the darker side, maybe you caused envy in the eyes of your enemies. You are one of those people who says, "They are shooting at me from both sides — I must be right." I always thought that overlooks the distinct possibility that you are just a jerk and nobody likes you.

Those are the typical year-end questions. What I want to propose are some more profound inventory questions.

We Need Reminding More Than Instructing

Now, the chances of me saying something in the next 35 minutes that you have not heard before is essentially zero. But it was Samuel Johnson who once said we need to be reminded more than instructed. I think especially in the Christian community, we want to teach, we want to learn, we want to grow, we want to learn new things. But fundamentally, we are not doing that well with the things we already know. So I want to remind you, as you ask the question — what kind of year was 2016? — here are some of those inventory questions.

The Importance of Self-Evaluation

Number one, recognize the importance of the very act we are going through: self-evaluation. Paul writes in Galatians 6:3, "If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions."

There are natural times in life when this happens. When you graduate from high school, that is the first one. You go to college, you get out of college — and that is great, because now you can move out of the dorm and back in with your parents and stay there for another 15 or 20 years playing video games. Then maybe you get married — that is one of those moments. Or you have a baby. You have that baby and you go, "I know how to make one of these, but I don't know what to do with it now that I have it." There are natural moments like these.

What I am going to recommend, however, is that self-examination should be a constant process — not paralysis by analysis, not overthinking it, but consciously examining your life.

What the Midlife Crisis Taught Us

I became a Christian in 1980, and one of the things I started to do was read. I moved right into the golden age of bookstores — Barnes and Noble, Borders, and a great store called Bookstar, which was a little smaller and hardly had anybody in it, which is why it is not around anymore. What I love about books is that they tell you where the culture is. If you want to know where the culture is, go to Costco and see what books they are stocking. Whatever they are stocking book-wise is going to tell you where people are, because if it is not selling, it is gone.

There was a topic that was hot from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. There were books and seminars everywhere — I remember going to a weekend-long study on it. That topic was the midlife crisis. Nobody has a midlife crisis anymore. Nobody can wait that long. People are in crisis at 12, and the world is shattered at 15.

When you boil it down, a midlife crisis was one of two things. Either you came up for air, looked around, and said, "I am in deep water. I wanted to be a millionaire by 40. I turn 40 tomorrow. My net worth is zero. The Powerball is not until Wednesday. I am probably not going to make it." Or — and this is far more crippling — you come up for air about to turn 40, having had all these career goals, relational goals, and financial goals, and you have achieved them all, and you go, "Who cares?" How did you get there? You got there by living life without stopping along the way to examine it, to take an inventory, to take a look at where you are.

The Challenge of Seeing Yourself Clearly

It is very hard to examine yourself accurately. This is my own assessment, which could be wrong: I think I am a lot better than I used to be, but I tend to be a very critical person. The only person I give the benefit of the doubt to is myself. I grade myself with great understanding, but I do not extend that grace to others. That means I have blind spots — and by definition, I do not know what they are. I need help.

You have to be open enough to allow people to speak into your life. If you are married, God gave you a spouse who can perform that task, if you will let them. The problem is the conversation tends to go like this: "Honey, I really want to improve. Tell me what I need to work on." And then they tell you, and you say, "I don't do that." That is a discussion killer. You are not going to get input that way. But you need to understand the importance of that input.

The Value of Time

You had a great year if you understood the value of time. The passage we read from 2 Timothy 4, beginning in verse 6, shows that Paul somehow senses his death is near. "The time for my departure has come." And that changes everything.

You always have those moments — and I'm not surprised by them, but I find them interesting — where somebody will have a brush with death and someone will ask, "Did it change your perspective?" Yes, it did. But why do we need to move to crisis to get that perspective?

Psalm 90:12 says — and I'll tell you right now, you should write this down — "Teach us to number our days aright, that we might gain a heart of wisdom." Help us understand the finiteness of time, and the fact that we don't know what that span is.

Your heart beats about 3,600 times an hour, 86,000 times a day, 32 million times a year. So when you watch the Rose Bowl parade tomorrow, I don't know how many heartbeats you have left, but you have 32 million fewer than when you watched the Rose Bowl last year. And many of us live life like we're at an NBA game, waiting for the fourth quarter when the guys say "two minutes" — now we'll go. Teach us to number our days aright.

The Death Clock

There is a website that became my screensaver for a long time: deathclock.com. If you go to deathclock.com, you plug in your birth date, your gender, your body mass, and your disposition — normal, optimistic, or pessimistic. Then you hit the button, and it shows you the estimated day you will die, and it starts counting down.

Like I said, it was my screensaver, and it was driving me crazy. I'd be on the phone looking at this thing counting down, thinking, get to the point, man, I'm dying here. So on Saturday, September 9th, 2023, if you're not doing anything, swing by Gilbert — they'll be doing a memorial service for me, if my disposition is normal. If it's optimistic, it's October 16th, 2048. But no one has ever called me optimistic.

When you put in pessimistic and hit the button, it says, "Sorry, the time for your departure has passed." I have to understand that. I know the time for my departure has come. I know I'm going to die.

A Word to Younger People

I've had the privilege in the last couple of years to spend a good chunk of time talking to younger people. I've been out at Grand Canyon University with different groups quite a bit — and I'll define younger as the 18 to 40 group. Here's what I try to tell them to start with, and this is a big deal.

I've been where you are. I know you look at me and don't think it, but I've been there. Here's the part of the equation you need to understand: I am where you are going. You are going to be a fat, sick old man someday. That's just the way it is. It's not going to change.

Periodically I'll do a memorial service for somebody who died under circumstances people couldn't anticipate, and they'll say, "We were so surprised by his death." It's not the time to nitpick, but you're not surprised that he died, are you? Did you think he was going to be one of 14 billion people on the planet who beat this thing? You only have a finite amount of time, and when you understand that, it changes your perspective.

Contentment as the Missing Ingredient

This brings me to one of my all-time favorite passages, 1 Timothy 6:6-8: "Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and it is certain we can take nothing out. If we have food and clothing, with those we should be content."

I got into this topic years and years ago. It was one of the first subjects I found myself really getting into — this idea of contentment. I saw it as the missing ingredient in our lives. There is this permanent state of being discontent.

You saw it if you have little kids. One of the worst things about Christmas is watching ungrateful little children open gifts. They rip it open, and if you push them to say thank you, they throw it aside and rip the next one open, and then when they're all done, they play with the box. When I get frustrated watching that, I remind myself why — because that is exactly the way I am. God gives me something, and I rip it open and love the gift, but I don't love the Giver. The missing ingredient in life is contentment.

A Fresh Look at the Passage

Now I want to show you something. This is a big deal for me, so because it was big for me, I want it to be big for you. One day I was at Forrest's home teaching this passage. I was rambling around, and all of a sudden I saw something I had never seen before, even though I had taught this passage a dozen times.

If you take out verse 7, this makes a great deal more sense. "Godliness with contentment is great gain" — skip verse 7 — verse 8: "If we have food and clothing, with those we should be content."

Contentment and Letting Go

Clothing and food — we should be content with those. Verse 7 is in the way. Verse 7 screws this thing up. Any good editor would chop out verse 7. The problem is this: God wrote it, so it must be there for a reason. Standing in that position at Forrest's home, looking at this passage, I realized not that verse 7 is in the way, but that it is the key to contentment. We brought nothing into the world, and we can't take anything out of it. Once you understand that, you can be content. You don't have to go and acquire and acquire and preserve and protect, because you can't take it with you.

I got, about six or eight weeks ago, a new used car. It's a really nice car. Sandy got it — it's a long story, but the essence of it is she was talking to a guy and she said, "My husband needs a new car." He said, "Well, have him come in." Sandy said, "He's not coming in." They started talking, she saw this car, and she said, "This is what he would pick out." And it's absolutely exactly the car I would buy. The best part of it is, I'm sitting at home, there's a knock at the door, there's a guy there, and he says, "I've got a car for you. Drive it. If you want it, it's yours. If you don't want it, call me and I'll take it back." I loved it the minute I sat in it — the seats moving around and all that.

Here's the problem. I park it way out in East Egypt because I don't want to get the thing dinged. I came in early today going, where am I going to park? Because I know what's going to happen — some family is going to open their door and ding this thing. I parked it the other day way out, rows from here to the back of the building, with nothing around it. I come out, and there's one guy who decides to park his car right next to mine. So I walk around to see if he put a ding in it, and he didn't. But I am reminded every day — it hasn't changed where I park — I am reminded every day that this is absolutely stupid. I came in with nothing and I'm leaving with nothing.

These things that you think will make you happy, they will bring you satisfaction. But it's momentary. It doesn't matter. I don't want it to happen, but there's a sense in which I need somebody to open their door and just slam it into the side of my car so I can go, "Perfect. Now I can park between two cars and it won't matter." When I saw that passage, I went, wow — my life is consumed with exactly this kind of thing.

Paul's Assessment of His Own Life

I want to hone in here. Looking at the year, look at 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 7. Paul gives you the assessment of his life. I'm blown away by this, because you'll hear people all the time say, "At the end of my life I want to hear, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'" That's Jesus' assessment of you. This is not Jesus' assessment of Paul — this is Paul's assessment of Paul. I find that stunning.

Here's what he said: "I fought the good fight." You are in a battle. We tend to minimize it, but you are in a battle with a real enemy. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to put on the full armor of God. Without getting too technical, I want to point something out that doesn't carry over into the English. "Put on," in the Greek, has the idea of put on once and for all and leave on. In English, if I just said, "Tell me what you read there," I think you'd say it reads like: put on the armor, fight the battle, take it off, put it on again — as if you only need armor when you're in battle. But Paul says put it on and leave it on, which tells me that I am in a battle 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And it is against the devil's schemes, his cunningness, his deceptions. Our struggle — some translations say "wrestle." I watched a wrestling match yesterday. It was actually at Midland, so a bunch of schools were there, and it was the 157-pound weight class. It was an Iowa kid seeded second against a kid from Nebraska seeded first. Their match went into one-minute overtime, then into a sudden-death period where neither one scored, then into another overtime, and another overtime. I don't know anything about wrestling. All I know is I don't want to do it. These kids were so exhausted. That is the idea Paul has here. You are in that kind of match not for three three-minute periods, but for the rest of your life — against an enemy who is crafty and cunning, who is an angel of light and a subtle serpent and a roaring lion seeking to destroy you.

Finishing the Race

Paul says, back to the text, 2 Timothy 4:7: "I fought a good fight. I finished the race." I really wrestle with how honest to be here — not that I would be dishonest, but I just wouldn't be totally honest. Finishing the race is way harder than I thought it would be. I genuinely thought — and I don't know where I got the idea — that somehow it would get easier, that life would wind down and responsibilities would fade away. It's just the opposite. It's brutal.

I don't know how to measure it. You fought the good fight — but how? What standard do I use? The term I have, the term many of you have in your lives, is "the new normal." I don't know how much I can do. Is that enough? How much is too much? I constantly feel like I'm underperforming, and then I think, but not enough to change it — so what does that mean? Life gets complex, and the physical aspect of it is grueling.

And Paul says — and I am in awe of this — "I fought the good fight." We see it in the stock announcements all the time: past performance doesn't guarantee future results.

Finishing Strong

The fact that it's been good doesn't mean you'll finish strong. Paul uses this analogy in 1 Corinthians 9: "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets a prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training." He's talking about the Corinthian equivalent of the Olympic Games. Competitors would sign a contract, agree to train for at least six months, and adhere to a strict diet and training program.

They went into strict training to get a crown that brought with it three things: you became a lifetime hero in the land — think Michael Phelps forever — you received a lifetime tax exemption, and your children could not be drafted into the armed services. Those were significant rewards. And yet Paul says they do it to get a crown that won't last. We do it to get a crown that will last forever.

The Meaning of Discipline

It's the idea of discipline. I picked up a book written in 2005 by Chuck Swindoll, and it is really good. Swindoll just lays it out. He says discipline is training that corrects and perfects our mental faculties or molds our moral character. He also defines it as control gained by enforced obedience.

LA Fitness and places like it are going to be jammed tomorrow. But here's what I've learned: there's a big difference between joining a gym and going to the gym. There's a big difference between New Year's resolutions and actually doing them. Last night I was jamming ice cream in and watching the clock because we had till midnight to get it in. When I finished I thought, who am I kidding? I'll be back for ice cream by Wednesday morning.

But it goes beyond the easy laughs we can all relate to. The real challenge is the discipline to be the man or woman of God that God has called you to be. We do it to get a prize that will last forever.

Fighting, Finishing, and Keeping the Faith

Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:7, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." Look at the definite article there. He doesn't use a personal pronoun. He doesn't say "I kept my faith." He says "I kept the faith" — the body of truth.

The Oxford Dictionary chose its word of the year for 2016: post-truth. It's defined as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. I talked to people on all sides during this election cycle, and when I would point to a fact, people would say, "I don't care. I don't care what the facts are."

We're in a tough world. When Paul said "I kept the faith," I say this to encourage you and to urge you: be strong. You're going into a world that says it doesn't matter. We can't even figure out which bathroom to use. And you're going to come along and say that Jesus is the only way — and that is going to be really hard. You'll need to say it with gentleness, love, kindness, and care, but you cannot waffle on it. Paul said at the end of his life, "I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith."

The Crown That Is Coming

Here is the last thing. Paul anticipates the reality that Jesus is coming again. It's in verse 8: "Now there is in store for me a 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."

This verse is critical. If it stopped after "award to me on that day," I'd say, good for you, Paul. But he doesn't stop there. He says you and me. This is the future. There is a day when I will stand not with the commissioner of the league, or the sales manager, or the company CEO on stage at an annual convention receiving a trophy. This is an award, a crown, a recognition from Jesus Himself.

I want to go to heaven. But if I'm honest, I want to go to heaven more to get out of here than simply to be there. When we read about heaven — no more tears, no more hurting, no more aching — that's not ultimately what makes heaven special. What makes heaven special is that Jesus is there. The last words Jesus speaks in the New Testament, in Revelation 22, are: "Behold, I am coming soon."

Looking at What Is Unseen

Second Corinthians 4:16-18 says: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

This is all temporary. This is all passing away. I'm so excited for you to get the building built across the street. Having gone through similar building phases at East Valley and Gilbert, I know it's going to be unbelievable.

Pushing Through the Wall

Everything is recycled. Everything is a rehab. Everything is a remodel. This is all passing away. When I get that locked and loaded, that becomes my motivation. That's how I push through.

I've never run a marathon, but I understand there's this thing called the wall that you hit where many people quit. It's not as much physical, though there's that, but mental — how do I get through the wall in life? I push through when I understand that this is temporary. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. It matters, because it's here that I'm demonstrating the love, the honor, and the glory of God to the world around me.

I'm not in the land of the living going to the land of the dying. I'm in the land of the dying going to the land of the living.

Taking Ownership of Your Year

Now, what kind of year did you have? You had a number when we started. Maybe it changed when we asked these new questions. Maybe you came up — maybe it was a two and now it's an eight, or it was an eight and now it's a two.

Here's what I know. If you had a bad year, let me net this out: it's your fault. Not Luke's fault. Not Matthew's fault. Not your spouse's fault. Not your boss's fault. It's your fault. Here's what's really condemning — if you have a bad 2017, you've got nobody to blame but you.

You can ask these questions. That doesn't mean circumstances are going to be easy, with no hurt and no pain. It means that in the midst of that, you see God work.

Seeing the World from God's Perspective

I was listening to somebody teach the other day — I won't tell you who, because if I did, you'd think less of me. But he defined faith, and I liked it, as seeing the world from God's perspective. That's what I need to do. I need to push through all these illusions and see things as God sees them.

That will make 2017 a great year from an eternal perspective. It doesn't mean you won't get sick. It doesn't mean you won't have relational problems. It doesn't mean your car's not going to get dinged. But it means that in it, you're going to ask, how do I glorify God in the midst of this? How do I see Him work?

The reason I can think that way is because Jesus came. We just did the Christmas season, but we can't separate Christmas from Easter. To paraphrase the old Tony Campolo — it's Friday, but Sunday's coming. It's Christmas, but Easter's coming. Jesus rose from the dead. He died for you. We celebrate that, and that drives the way we live.