Live Life Over
Tom Shrader explores a fascinating survey of fifty 95-year-olds who were asked what they would do differently if they could live life over. Their three dominant answers—reflect more, risk more, and do things that would last beyond death—provide a framework for examining what truly matters in life. He challenges believers to prioritize meditation on God's character, take meaningful risks despite fear of failure, and invest in eternal rather than temporal pursuits.
“The more I understand and know God, the more I love Him.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Miscellaneous
Recorded: July 30, 1998
Duration: 40 min
Themes: wisdom, reflection, risk, legacy, purpose, priorities, eternity, meditation, aging gracefully, mid-life crisis, retirement planning, empty nester, seeking purpose, fear of failure, senior adult, evaluating life choices
Scripture: Philippians 3:10, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Theological Themes: eternal perspective, spiritual discernment, biblical wisdom, stewardship, kingdom values, temporal vs eternal, spiritual maturity, contemplative prayer
Full Transcript
As we close this part down for summer, I thought it would be interesting to share something I read years ago. There was a book with a really fascinating premise called Who Switched the Price Tags? The author, Tony Campolo, was describing how when he was a kid, his friends would go into a store as a team and see an item that was $2 and another that was $5. They wanted the $5 item but only wanted to pay $2, so they would switch the price tags.
Campolo was saying that interestingly enough, somebody has come along in life and done the same thing. They have taken the things that were very valuable and made them cheap, and the things that are very cheap they have made valuable. It's a fascinating premise.
In the midst of this typical 250-page book, there's one paragraph where Campolo quotes a non-scientific but fascinating survey that I want to talk to you about today. The survey simply questioned 50 people who were at least 95 years of age, and they asked them one question: If you had your life to live over again, what would you do differently?
The Wisdom of Age
I don't know the background of these people. Knowing Campolo and knowing just the way these things happen, I doubt that it has a religious component to it or an economic demographic. I think it's just 50 people. Plus, when you're looking for 95-year-olds, you can't be too picky anyway.
To me, this is the kind of stuff I like, because at that point I believe—and I say this as I get a little older myself—there are things that even experience can't teach you; only time does. There's just wisdom, I think, that comes with it, if you're watching and discerning at all.
So they asked these people what they would do if they could live their life over again. They found three dominant answers, variations of the same themes. If I had my life to live over again, here are the three things I would do: Number one, I would reflect more. Number two, I would risk more. And number three, I would do things that would live after I'm dead.
It's fascinating to me to understand that with probably no demographic or theological bend here, these people were simply saying: If I was going to do this over again, these are the things that I would spend time on.
Reflection: More Than Casual Thought
I would reflect more. By that, we mean more than just a casual thought. We would substitute for that not an emphasis on knowledge per se, but an emphasis on thinking. My favorite word from scripture is "ponder." Well, we don't use that word anymore.
You have a whole thing now that says in the next wave, in the next future, the commodity that people want is knowledge. Knowledge is power. I don't think so, and I'll tell you my own reason. Just from my little time on the internet, there's so much out there and so much knowledge that it's almost equalized knowledge.
Here's the issue. Here's the commodity for the future: discernment. What's truly worth knowing? What do these things truly mean? Do I have the ability to listen and to try to understand what's happening, to stop and to think?
The Wall Street Journal, in an article several years ago, said every business executive should be spending 20% of his or her day thinking. That's time where nothing's going on—just thinking.
The Value of Unstructured Time
My favorite part, and I'll be as frank as I can about vacation: it is a great time because I always go over to Northern California, up north to San Francisco, and hang out on the beach. That's terrific. I go home and play golf. I love that. I get to do that for four, five, six days.
But my favorite part of the whole vacation is just not having anything to do but to think. Everybody who works with me—it's their worst nightmare—because I come back with yellow pads with all these thoughts that seem so profound and significant on a beach and seem stupid when you put them in the laboratory here and make them work. But it's just all that time to think. It's just that premium on the idea of stopping and thinking.
True Meditation: Filling, Not Emptying
Another word that we might use, if we could define it, would be "meditate." The problem with the word meditate is that in our culture, it conjures up a picture of somebody sitting, and the idea of meditating is to empty their mind. You're kind of trying to take their mind and empty it out.
But what the scripture says and what meditate really means is to fill your mind with a singular thought and to think it over and over and over again. Not to empty it, but to fill it and to understand it.
The Ultimate Focus of Our Reflection
Now, what should we be thinking about? Look at Philippians chapter 3, verse 10. This is from the Amplified, so you get the whole picture here of what the scripture says: "For my determined purpose is that I may know Him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving, recognizing, and understanding the wonders of this person more strongly and more clearly."
So when we talk about thinking, what we're really talking about in our sense—in an ultimate sense, and then everything else flowing out of it—is thinking and meditating and understanding God and who He is. Taking the scripture and understanding the person of God: What is God like? What does He mean? How does He speak? What are His characteristics? What are His attributes? That's what I need to understand.
I'm convinced more and more that the key to spiritual growth is not going to another seminar. It's not plugging in another tape. All those things are helpful. It's not having another experience. It's not finding ten ways to think. The way that you will absolutely skyrocket your spiritual growth is to understand God and study Him and who He is, His attributes.
his characteristics. Now does that have practical ramifications? You bet it does. R.C. Sproul offers this comment: God has made us with harmony of heart and harmony of head, of thought and of action. So the more we know Him, the more we are able to love Him. The more we love Him, the more we seek to know Him. To be central in our hearts, He must be foremost in our mind.
And then some terms that might be familiar to some of you. Sproul says religious thought is a prerequisite to religious affection and obedient action. Here's what R.C. is saying: You don't really love someone with real love until you know them. And the more you know them, the more you love them.
Susan and I just celebrated 20 years together. We're just starting to really know and understand each other and to begin to think and to begin to anticipate. Yesterday morning - Wednesday is always my earliest morning, but I've done this lesson before, so I didn't have to get up particularly early. So I got up at five o'clock and I went out and there was no coffee made. This is a big deal. So I'm thinking, well, this is a snafu in our relationship. This is not how this was supposed to be.
But I got out of there, did my thing, and left. Obviously Susan was resting. So I called and I was ready to say, "I don't know if you noticed it, but there was no coffee this morning." I called and she said hello and I said, "Hey," and she said, "Tom, I need to apologize to you. There was no coffee for you today." And she knew how significant that was.
This sounds really stupid, but that was a real turn on to me. Because it just said this is how much she cares about me to understand that in my life, this was really a significant little thing. Is it a giant thing? No. Is it something I was going to get upset about? No. But she understood. And I thought, isn't that funny? The more you start to know somebody with those kind of things, now you can really begin to love them.
Knowing God Leads to Loving God
Well, with God, it's the same situation. It's to know Him, it's to understand who He is. The more I understand Him, the more I love Him. I'm debating whether I'll see Saving Private Ryan, because I don't know if I can handle it - I'm not a graphic, violent kind of guy. Zorro took me to the limit, except to find out that I do look like Antonio Banderas. Very rewarding. Several people have pointed out that once that mask is in place, there is a resemblance.
But I understand the basic premise of the show is that these guys go in to save Private Ryan because his three brothers are killed. There is a moment of gratitude in a moment of understanding what was done. That's got to be unbelievable - here are these guys going in to save one man. But let me tell you something: that's nothing compared to the fact that God sent His only begotten Son to save you from your sin.
I think about some great act of salvation, and I'm not putting down Private Ryan - I'm saying that's a great act of love and we tip our hats and we'll make movies about that. That's really significant. But that pales in comparison to God sending a perfect Son to die on the cross for sinful people. Well, the more I understand and know that, the more I love Him.
The Power of Reflection in Living Proactively
So in my life, as you reflect more, as you approach life and prepare to live it, all of a sudden I now know things. I understand life. I'm reflecting so my life is not reactive - it's proactive.
I'm going to take a second here, and this is a bit of a detour. Many of you are familiar with the book Halftime by Bob Buford. His premise is that God's done something special in our generation alone, and that is this: about 1900, life expectancy was plus or minus 50. Now it's plus or minus 75, heading toward 100. What God has done to our generation as He's done to no generation before is give us one adulthood, and then a second one.
Most people - men in particular, and here's the age - it's interesting he picks an age and he says at age 43, guys are understanding that there's this second deal, there's this second chance. His premise is the second half has in it all sorts of components that make it better than the first half.
The Advantages of the Second Half of Life
Here's his list. Number one: you're less diverted by non-essentials. Your mind is a little more focused. You understand what the central issues are and those peripheral matters just drift away. You reach a point where you start to go, "I don't need to really work it like this. I don't really need to worry about what everybody said. It really doesn't matter."
All of a sudden now I can focus on my agenda. For the first half, most of us don't even understand what our agenda is. We don't even understand why we're here, what we're doing. We're just doing whatever everybody tells us to do. Now we can focus on this and I begin to gain control of my life. It's not that there aren't things beyond my control, but it's now that I have a focus and now that I've gotten rid of these non-essentials. My life takes on more of a purpose that allows me to gain control.
Again, I have more resources now. We tend to think in terms of money, but money is part of it. There's no question Susan and I have more money now - we are a long way from rich, but Susan and I have more money now than we did when we were 23. There's just things that you can do now, and money is part of it. But you have more intellectual resources. You have more human resources. You have more relationships. You have more ways to network. You have more contacts. You have more people that you can call. You just have more life experience.
Have more resources that make the second half potentially way better than the first half. It's an opportunity for really new beginning. It's an opportunity to establish a fresh start. It's an opportunity to tackle new things in new ways.
Here are the last two things you learn. You learn how to play through pain. There are messages that I get on my voicemail now that are marked urgent that 15 years ago would have thrown me in a dither for a week, and now I just go, "Those are road bumps." It just doesn't faze me.
Learning to Handle Life's Urgencies
I think I've told this story here. I got this - I'm picking up my voicemail the other day, and I never save messages. I've got one that I save, and it's from one of my daughters, but I just erase them because I presume if I got to save them, I know I'm not going to call them back. If I got to hear the save, it'll only make me feel guilty, so I just put them out in cyberspace and get it over with.
So I picked up my messages and it says, "You have three new messages." Normally I'm so impatient, normally I'm just hitting them there, but for whatever reason I was bent away. What if I couldn't get back? And it said, "In one save message." Wow, that's weird. Skip, skip, skip. Get to the save message.
"Tom, you need to give me a call. I have a major problem in my life. My life has fallen apart. I've got major disasters. I cannot begin to lay them out for you. My home number is this, my business number is this, my mobile number is this, my fax number is this, my pager's number is this, my shoe size is seven and a half - whatever you need, you need to get a hold of me." And I mean this thing goes on and on and on and on like this. Then I get the date, and the thing came in two weeks ago, and I said, "Oh brother."
So my instinct is to avoid it, but I know that's not right, so I call. Because if it's that big a problem, you're still here, so I call and I get this person on the phone. I say, "Hey, it's Tom. I return your call. I really apologize for this. What clearly happened is I was out in a hurry, I hit save thinking I'd come back to it, I just absolutely lost it. I just got this message, and I just want to respond to you." The person on the other end had a long pause, and then the person said, "I don't remember why I called."
Now maybe that's a little overreaction, but I find that to be pretty helpful. I find a lot of these real critical calls - if you give them two or three days, by the time you get to them they're all solved. Something about life just kind of tells you, you just kind of learn to get through it, that none of these blows are fatal, and most of them are ultimately advantageous because they teach us.
The other thing about the first half of life is you learn about grace - you learn about God's grace. I think you learn about grace to each other and being gracious and dealing with one another.
What 95-Year-Olds Would Do Differently
So these 95-year-old people said if I had my life to live over again, the first thing I would do would be to reflect more - that is, to ponder, to meditate, to be proactive in life.
Here's the second thing they said: The second thing I would do is risk more. Now you got to understand I'm working off a paragraph, so I have to read a lot of things into it. But it strikes me that they did not go back and reflect on times of exhilarating successes, but they reflected on times - not even of failure - they reflected on times where they didn't even try.
There are not many things that I am afraid of. I mean there's a lot of physical things - I'm going to beat you up, that kills me, especially with a girl - that just kills me. But I know that goes away. But there's one fear, and I don't know that that's the right word that I have, and that is that I would get to the end of my life and say, "I wish I would have," "If I only would have," "I could have."
The Credit Belongs to Those in the Arena
Teddy Roosevelt had a quote that's become very famous - become famous for a variety of reasons. One, Roosevelt used it, but the second one is Richard Nixon embraced this quote. This became a very important quote for Nixon, and it's just got Nixon written all over it. As you read it, you can almost hear him say it.
"It's not the critic who counts - not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes again, because there's no effort without error and shortcomings, but who actually strives to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best in the end knows the triumphs of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
Now if you look at that - that last paragraph, the last phrase - it throws you back into the book of Revelation where Jesus says, "You're not hot, you're not cold, you make me want to throw up." What Roosevelt is saying here is that the issue is to be in the game. Anybody can sit on the side and criticize. Is there a place for the critic? I guess. Is there a place to point these things out? You bet. But it always strikes me as odd that the movie critic has never made a movie, that the guy who reviews the concert can't play a chord. That always strikes me as odd.
I understand it, and I play the role, and we all fall into that, and I understand it's part of human nature to want to comment and to understand. But I'll tell you this: the person for whom the credit ought to be set aside is at least the person who's out there.
We're in a car the other day with a guy, and there's this gal walking, and she is a big fat woman. She's huge. She is gigantic. And the guy in the car with me said, "Isn't that pathetic? Look at her out there."
And I thought, you know what I thought? I thought how about this? She put on a pair of shorts and she's got on some shoes. I'm going to give her credit - she's doing a heck of a lot more than I am. See, I've had to evolve to this position because I don't naturally go there. But I give great points now for those that are out there doing something.
I'm more than willing to criticize, but almost only now by invitation and even then in a critical spirit of love. I get more and more guys who give me tapes and say, "Will you listen to them and criticize them?" And I just can't do it. I love to listen to them and say, "You know what? I think you did a great job here. This is good. And this is good. And this is good." The stuff that stinks, you know, it stinks. You don't need me to tell you how it stinks. That's what I want - somebody who's just willing to get in the arena and to give it a whirl.
The Problem of Moderate Living
C.S. Lewis offers this observation on our generation. He says this: "Our age is marked by moderate vice and moderate virtue." Here's what he's saying. We don't even sin very well. We don't do good things with much vigor and we don't even sin with any pizzazz. We're just into averageness.
We've bred that in a way in the sense that we've been so concerned about equality that we've been invited to find equality as equal achievement, equal status, equal this. We aren't equal. Michael Jordan and I are not equal. Tiger Woods and I are not equal. Bill Gates and I are not equal. They are all my superiors in the fields that you would associate with them. We aren't even close.
When you start saying we're going to have everybody equal, what you're saying is our goal is mediocrity. Average becomes the goal. And I just don't think that's where you want to be.
The "Whatever" Culture
If you look at the culture, we have truly - we look at the kids and we get on them because they'll go, "Whatever." They're like a little soda pop where the cap's off and all the fizz is gone. We've looked at this where we say whatever. I don't mean this in a political sense at all, because I'm not shocked by the last three days. I haven't met a person yet that goes, "Wow, I never dreamt that was possible." I haven't met a person yet on that.
But what makes me sad is to have to listen to people somehow justify. Richards, who's hard to just stand anyway, was on the TV the other night with that voice going, "Well, you got to say the man's got the economy going and that's all that matters. He told, he didn't lie. He told the untruth." What the heck is that? You got to be a lawyer to come up with that. An untruth. It's a lie. He didn't do anything but lie under oath.
Now I got my kid and he accidentally hits a ball through a window and I said, "Did you do it?" And he goes, "No." And I want to punish this kid because he accidentally broke a window. Now I got a guy who's had, apparently, sexual relationships with at least now we've established four or five gals and it's okay. I don't get that.
I don't have a problem with him per se. I'm saying when you go, "Well, that's all right. It's an untruth." And you say lying is an untruth. You've just said, "Okay, we aspire to nothing in the area of morals or ethics."
The Double Standard Problem
If Jimmy Swaggart does it, it's a disaster. If a guy who's nominated for the joint chiefs of staff does it, years ago in the midst of a separation from his wife, he's unqualified for the job. But if the commander in chief does it in the Oval Office, it's okay. I don't know. Something breaks down for me there. I'm not the brightest guy in the world, but there's a gap there and it makes it very difficult.
Here's how you know it's a problem. Try to explain it to a 12-year-old. And when you try to explain it to a 12-year-old, they give you the Rudy look. That's my dog. They give you the, "Oh, what are you laying there?" Because it doesn't go. It doesn't, I don't think so. I don't even mean that in a political way. I'm just saying there's where you are. When you aspire to that, you've got a problem.
The Call to Risk More
We have to risk more and risk more is in action, but it's also a risk more of thought. We've got to be willing to say, "You know what? We're going to call people to a higher standard." I'll give you a little example. The church I go to, we are telling people that if they have children birth through sixth grade, they need to work at least a quarter of the year in the CE department somewhere taking care of kids.
Talking to a guy from another church, he said, "You know what? We just had a huge argument among our board of directors because we were going to send a letter saying to the parents, 'Could you possibly work perhaps two weeks if it wasn't a big hassle somewhere in the year?'" What are you calling me to there? I think people are anxiously waiting for a call to a higher level.
I think everybody understands. I don't want to look at, if I'm just doing what I feel, then there's no difference between me and a dog. And I think everybody instinctively understands that. I think you need to be willing to risk more, not just in terms of action, but in terms of thought, in terms of relationship, in terms of command, in terms of dealing with people. You need to be willing to sit it out.
Setting Higher Standards
By "sit out," I mean to sit out in front of you these standards and to aspire to them. The thing that will kill that, staying on action, the reason I'm convinced most people never give it a try is because they fail. Those of you that play golf, why is it - this is fascinating - why is a three-foot putt harder than a ten-foot putt? Ten-foot putt, three times plus longer. A three-foot putt is infinitely harder than a ten-foot putt. And the reason is simple. You know you ought
to make the three foot putt. You're standing over the ball, and I had one yesterday on the 18th hole that was just the worst putt perhaps I've ever hit in my life. I don't even know what that was. It's not three feet, it's not uphill, it doesn't break—it's a nothing putt. I stood over it and I must have just choked my guts out and not even realized it. I never even hit the hole.
Why is a three foot putt tougher than a ten foot putt? The reason is you know you ought to make it. So now you're thinking, "Well what are these other guys going to say if I miss this three foot putt?" I can help you out. They're very happy. They're very happy if you miss the three foot putt. I didn't see one guy go, "Dog gone, that's a bad break, I missed that putt." All of a sudden, it's a mini view of what happens in fear—your pride kicks in.
See that's what's happened. Now you're afraid to do anything because what's it going to look like if I fail? Hey, first of all, very few people are watching and the people who are watching are going to be happy you failed. You're not going to be any sort of hero, but it's your pride. What's it going to look like if I try it and I don't do it?
Learning to Embrace Failure
To me, the most interesting athletic event in the whole world is the high jump and the pole vault. Because they're the only two events that end with failure. You fail. When's the high jump over? When's the pole vault over? When you fail. That's when it's over.
And yet there's something about that. I think somehow we've got to learn to embrace failure as part of life and turn it into growing and not really be particularly concerned about what other people think.
Doing Things That Last Beyond Your Lifetime
Here's the last thing that they said. They said that they would do things that would last beyond their lifetime. How do you do that? I'm convinced the answer lies in this and other passages that communicate the same truth. Second Corinthians chapter 4 verses 16, 17 and 18.
Paul writing: "Therefore we don't lose heart, we don't give up. Though the outer man is decaying, beginning to sag and bag and drag, the outer man's falling apart, our inner man is being renewed day by day." How's that happening? Well, He said, I'm going to tell you in a second, but before I get there, I want you to understand that momentary light affliction, that is life. Momentary light affliction is producing for us—who's the us? Every human? No, just the Christian. That's what He's talking about. There's no eternal weight of glory being built up for the atheist or the pagan or the agnostic or the orthodox Buddhist. No, the us. Momentary light affliction is producing for these Christians an eternal weight of glory beyond anything we can think about.
What's the key, Paul? Nail it down for me. What is the thing that's going to keep me on track? How in the midst of this world am I not going to begin to become overwhelmed by the affliction or get sidetracked by the fact that my body's falling apart or start to see life wear and tear and be attracted to it? How do I stay focused?
The Key to Eternal Focus
He said, here's the answer. "We don't look at the things that are seen. We look at the things that aren't seen. The things that we see are temporal. The things we don't see are eternal."
Here you go. And these people instinctively went to it. Isn't that interesting? They said, "I would have liked to have done something that would have lasted beyond my lifetime." Well, the only thing that lasts beyond your life is your soul and the souls of the people around you. That's it. Everything else is passing away.
So if you say, "Here's what I want to do. I really want to make a difference," and then you're spending 12, 16 hours a day, 50, 60 hours a week on stuff that you can see, which is temporal. But your heart says, "I want to work on the stuff that's eternal," and your action isn't there, that's why you're frustrated.
What Does It Profit?
So Jesus tells the parable, and He said, "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world?" Here's what's interesting to me in this. He's not talking about a loser, He's talking about a winner. He said, what's the profit if a guy gets everything he wants? Yesterday, new numbers: Bill Gates, net worth, as of now, $51 billion. That's a lot. Seems like it anyway. $51 billion. So you can go ahead, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world? But he loses his soul.
I'm telling you, as you're struggling, you're trying to figure out, how can I stay motivated? How can I stay on the eternal? How can I stay on the important things? Here's the deal. I look at the things which I don't see which are eternal. And I dump my time in there, and I understand the rest of this stuff is passing away.
The Reality of Temporal Things
I understand that that brand new car that's parked out there right now, and you got me hacked off taking up two spaces because you don't want to get it dinged, is one day going to get a ding. And even if it doesn't, you're going to get sick of it and blow it off for the next thing anyway. That carpet that you got in, and you're just going nuts because it's been Scotch-guarded and everything else, and in comes some big old guy and he dumps grape juice on it—it's happening. It's going to happen. And you know what? You even say it's not important.
Some of you go to church. This is my favorite time. I can't sing this song, but I watch you sing it, and you sing it out loud. I don't get it. You sing, "I Surrender All." I don't buy that for a second. I watch you guys sing that song, and I'm going, "I'm going to sit this one out. I can't sing that song. I haven't surrendered it all. I'm hanging on to a lot of stuff here. I'm hanging on to a lot of these things."
When you say, "I surrender all," here's what you're saying: "I'm going to take all these things that are seen, which are temporal, and I'm going to give them away for the things that aren't seen, which are eternal, because that's where I want to focus."
Very helpful in this process to me is to ask these questions:
Ask yourself some of these questions. What do you want to be remembered for? When they gather around at the memorial service, and they say, "Okay, we're going to open up the microphone," what is it you want them to say? What would be the thing you'd like to be noted for? Good businessman? Nothing wrong with that.
I watched this at the Goldwater funeral. Very sad occasion. Sad simply because you realize that this guy probably wasn't in heaven, I'm thinking. They told great stories and army stories, and we laughed and we cried. But when it was over—and I'm a funeral guy, I love watching—when it was over, I'm going, "This is very empty here. This is very hollow here." Is that what you want to be noted for? Swashbuckling aviator? Senator? I guess. I don't know. What do you want to be noted for?
The Lifestyle Question
Here's the second thing. What's the lifestyle that you're willing to accept? Now, for some of you, not an issue. God's got you on a budget. You're making twelve grand a year—no problem. Some of you are making so much money that it isn't really an issue either because you're way out here, and it isn't going to matter. But the vast majority of you—and you can write this down, you can book this down—this is the number one obstacle, I think, to ministry in the church: exorbitant lifestyle. It just is.
If you're going to buy that 3,500 square foot house, you've got to furnish that dog, and heat that dog, and cool that dog, and pay tax on that dog, and you've got to bust your back to make extra money for that. If you're going to allow the people at your mortgage banker and your credit card company to establish your lifestyle—in other words, if it just says "approved" and therefore you can afford it—if you allow that to happen, you're doomed. You're doomed spiritually. There is no way you will develop a meaningful ministry if you've got your lifestyle stretched to the hilt.
That's why we don't even ask this question. The question that I get all the time is, "How much money should I give to God?" That's the wrong question. The question is, "How much of God's money should you keep?" That's the question. It's all His—what am I going to do with it?
The Move Toward Simplicity
One of the great encouraging things that I see is this huge move to simplify life. When it's just more house and more car, I don't care who you are or how much money you make, you are doomed to frustration. And you can take your ministry and flush it. It just isn't going to happen. What little ministry happens will happen in spite of that, and all that ought to do is frustrate you more, because it's just giving you a peek at what it could have been.
What do I want to be doing in ten years? Where do I want to be? There's something that's happening that's really—I call it cute, because it just is cute. It just makes me laugh. In the last month, I've had three guys who came out to my office, and they sat down and they said, "I want to do what you're doing. How do I get there?" I just find that so funny, because I don't have a clue. But at least what I applaud is the thought, because the thought goes like this: "I want to do what you're doing, so I'm going to go to people who are where I want to be in ten years, and I'm asking them, what did you do? What are the steps?" Where do you want to be in ten years?
Application Over Information
Here you go. How well am I applying what I already know? This is my argument against Sunday night church and adult Sunday school. I do not see the point of going to one lesson, and then another, and then another, when you haven't even applied a fraction of the first one. For most people—and understand, we're talking in generalities here—in the world, the major thing out there is spiritual malnutrition. But within most churches, especially if you're going to decent churches, and many of you are going to good churches, the big problem isn't spiritual malnutrition. It's spiritual constipation. That's the problem.
Here's a revolutionary idea. Why don't you try doing something? Not learning. Let's go a whole week and not learn—let's go a week and do. What are you doing with what you know? And the interesting thing is, the more you do with what you know, the more you'll learn. You've got to be applying what you know.
Defining Your Perfect Life
How about this? I asked this question to my small group, and they hate it—"This is stupid, this is dumb, Tom, that's dumb"—and they just blew it off. I think it's a great question: If your life was perfect, what would it look like? And the point there is to say, "Okay, if I could orchestrate things perfectly, how would they be?" Because once I see that, I can start to drive toward it, and now I can also begin to define what's essential and non-essential.
That's what all these questions do. All these questions force you to define what's important and what's not. Then all you got to do is lay your life on this grid, and you'll go, "Holy smokes, look at all this time and money I'm wasting over here in this area that I said wasn't even important. Here's the area I said is important, and I'm not even getting there."
So you ask the question, "What am I willing to give my life to?" Not what are you willing to die for. I don't think that's that hard. I could be wrong, but if somebody came in here right now and held me right up front, and they said, "Tom, here's what we're going to do. We're going to blow your brains out if you don't deny Christ," I honestly—and I could be wrong—but I honestly think I'd say, "You know, do me one favor. Just really make sure you splatter them all over, because I don't want to be flopping around very long. Just blow them out." If they said, "We're going to peel your skin off," I'd have to think about that one. But if they just said, "We're going to kill you"—
The challenge, I don't think, is to die for Christ in some martyr situation for us. The challenge is to live for Him in the midst of a very fallen world that is filled with distractions. In a world that sucks you in, and as you start to succeed in it, says you're doing better and better and better, and here you go.
As you succeed in the world, here's where you want to be with Christ. As you succeed in the world, you inevitably get pulled further and further away from Him. So that's it.
The Honest Wisdom of Age
I love this. I love these people. They're 95. They couldn't care less. And in a moment of honesty, and a sense of anonymity, they said, if I could do it over again, what would I do differently?
They said, I would reflect more, I would risk more, and I would do things that had eternal consequences. I would suggest, just for sake of thought, that you might ponder those three things and begin to act on them.
We'll come back in September and we will look at, for a week or two, what I learned on my summer vacation. I look forward to seeing you in September.