What I Learned on My Summer Vacation 2004 Part 1

Tom Shrader shares insights from his summer reading and experiences, focusing on how believers need to become 'instrument rated' Christians who trust Scripture over their natural instincts. Using the analogy of pilots who must trust their instruments even when their senses say otherwise, he emphasizes that God's ways are higher than our ways and that what we know from Scripture must trump what we feel.

“In this world, you and I need to become, if you will, instrument rated - we need to put our faith and trust not in our own instincts, not in our own understanding, not in our own wisdom, but in what God says.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

Recorded: September 01, 2004

Duration: 43 min

Themes: trust, feelings, truth, faith, wisdom, discernment, obedience, Scripture, struggling with emotions, new believer, doubting faith, feeling confused, parent, mentor, facing difficult decisions, young adult

Scripture: Proverbs 14:12, Isaiah 55, Romans 1, Romans 1:22, John 3:16, Philippians 3, Ecclesiastes 3:4

Theological Themes: biblical authority, Scripture, divine revelation, God's truth, spiritual discernment, sanctification, biblical worldview, hermeneutics

Full Transcript

Today, first day back, those of you who've been through this, you know the drill. We take these first two weeks and talk about what I learned on my summer vacation. What this allows me to do is just talk about a variety of things. Let me get out of the way some of the questions that we get all the time once we come back.

How was your vacation? It was terrific. What did you do? Here's the way that I've tried to summarize it. I essentially ate my way through North America. I have done nothing but eat since August 1st.

We started with the cruise. Some of you in here were with us on that cruise. I personally had a great time, and I think most of the people that were there had a terrific time. It was one of those things where we came back and we said, we ought to do this again. Then we started to sit down and plan it. To do it again, we thought two years from now was too long.

Planning Another Cruise

So we're actually going. We're working on it. I finalized the brochure stuff yesterday. We're going to do another one next October, October 1st. At 5 PM, we're going to leave Montreal and head to Quebec City, and then down to Prince Edward Island, and then to Nova Scotia, Bar Harbor, Maine, and end up in Boston. So we're going to take the fall colors through Canada and around.

There's two ways to do it, Boston up or Montreal down. The guys that we worked with who were excellent said that's the best way. So October 1st, 2005 at 5 PM, boom, we're out of there. We had a great time. We'll get your brochures out on that in probably about three or four weeks. But you can plan it now if you'd like.

We did that. My whole cruise was summarized. There's a lot of food on there, and some of it's really good. Some of it's OK. But my favorite parts are the grill. I like the grill. I like cheeseburgers. So you got all this fancy food - you get escargot and all that stuff, and I'll eat that. I'll eat anything. But I came up the third day, I came up to the cheeseburger bar, and a little Indonesian guy looked at me and said, "Double cheeseburger, extra cheese." That pretty much summarizes all that I am.

Remarkable Weather Everywhere

We were up in Flagstaff. One of the things we had on vacation this year, we had the most remarkable weather everywhere we went. We had incredible weather in Alaska. The natives were saying we need rain. How pretty was it? I'll tell you how you know it's pretty. When the crew that's on that ship is out there with their video camera, you know it's pretty. So we had great weather there.

We went up to Flag and had the kids and family come up and had a great time. Then we were in Cannon Beach, Oregon for a week. I mention this all the time. Ladies, you can tune out now. Gentlemen, if you're smart, you'll listen to this.

The Romance of Cannon Beach

If you want to romance the lady in your life, presumably your wife, if you want to romance her and sweep her off her feet and have this extraordinary romantic event, take a Thursday afternoon. You can work in the morning, work early into the afternoon, fly to Portland, and then drive 90 miles straight west to Cannon Beach. Spend Thursday night there. Then you got all day Friday, Saturday, Sunday, a half a day Monday, fly back Monday night. You'll feel like you've been gone for two weeks.

Cannon Beach is incredible. I mention Cannon Beach all the time, and no one ever goes there. We took some people with us this year, and they got there. They said, "You know, we've heard you talk about Cannon Beach. This is incredible." I said, "Hey, these lips don't lie, my friend. I'm telling you, Cannon Beach is incredible." So we had a great time there, did a little work, taught. We relaxed. We ate. We did everything.

Did we have fun? Absolutely. Are you ready to go? I am not, but I don't have a choice. So here we go.

Summer Reading Adventures

I mentioned I read a lot. I read a couple of novels. I read one really great novel, but I can't - you know, there's some stuff in there that if you read it, you might think less of me. So I can't recommend it to you. It was really good, though. I read a ton of magazines, a ton of newspapers. I read a book on the Panama Canal. I read a totally chick book. It's a totally chick book. I'm going to teach from that a little bit next week.

I read a book on, and these are stuff I'd never - in Cannon Beach, there's kind of a new agey kind of a feel to some of it. There's stuff in there that I'd never read. This is a book called The Art of Travel. It's just a fascinating book about travel, and this guy thinking about travel.

At the section here at the beginning, he's talking about going to this beautiful, this tropical island and the disconnect between the brochure and the reality. He's talking about arriving, and he's talking about the birds. All of a sudden, they're flying by and the beauty of it. He writes this: "But my awareness of them was weakened by a number of incongruous, unrelated elements. Among them, a sore throat that I developed during the flight, worry over having not informed a colleague I'd be away, a pressure across my temples, and a rising need to visit the bathroom. A momentous, but until then overlooked fact was making itself apparent. I had inadvertently brought myself with me on vacation."

It's a great idea, and just kind of little insights like that all the way through it. That's what I observed.

Life 2.0: A Cultural Shift

Well, here was one of the books I read. I'm going to spend a bit of a time on it. You can't see it, but it's called Life 2.0. Rich Karlgaard is the author. He's a publisher of Forbes magazine. I want to spend a little time talking about it, and then I want to pull a point out of this. Hopefully, you'll see how this Christian worldview stuff starts to develop.

He wrote an article in Forbes about kind of an exodus that was starting to take place, and he thought would really pick up speed. An exodus from large cities to small cities. He was beginning to respond to what he saw around him.

And by that, I mean the elements not just of work, but of cost and salary. A third of all manufacturing jobs are going overseas. He says a third of all white collar jobs are going overseas. He speaks of a radiology department, I think it was at Mass General Hospital, and how now with their MRIs, what they're doing is emailing their MRIs to India, having a tech there read them, and emailing them back, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

The Economics of Location

Housing has become a huge issue. I think he's from Bismarck, if I remember. Let me use artificial numbers here to make the point. When he graduated from high school in the early 70s, if you could find a $100,000 house in Bismarck, a comparable house in Palo Alto would sell for $200,000. Today, that $100,000 house in Bismarck sells in Palo Alto for $1.3 million. You've had this escalation of housing costs.

Take something like the Silicon Valley, where you had all these startups and things going on. It isn't going to happen there anymore. The largest concentration of Microsoft employees outside of the home office is in either Bismarck or Fargo - 3,200 employees. Because you can't afford to pay them enough to buy a $1.3 million house, but you can pay them enough to buy a $150,000 house, and they're going to be happy.

Personal Stories and Research

He writes about this, and people around the country start emailing him saying, "I did that. I did that. I did that." He gets his pilot's license and flies around and visits some of these people and then tells their story. It's a fascinating look at the future, what it means to you and me. I'm not exactly sure, perhaps nothing, because many of us are in an age where it isn't going to make any difference. We're just going to let it go and do whatever it's going to do.

I would think that it sounds right. It sounds correct, especially when you can telecommunicate and you can email and you can internet. He made just a passing comment that, to me, would make a move back to the Midwest acceptable. He talks about the technological advancements in clothing. So now you don't have to look like the Michelin man going to school. You can just do a couple of layers and you're plenty warm with the advancements in clothing.

Great Places to Live

At the back, the last fifty pages or so, he talks about great places to live. He breaks them down by categories. He talks about family cities and best small towns and emerging centers. Family cities that he mentions: Bismarck, Ashland Oregon, Boise, Columbia, Bowling Green, Des Moines. The Des Moines area - it's interesting here, he lists the population at 199,000. Metro Des Moines now is up to almost half a million people, and they probably don't have the infrastructure and will be miserable there. Arkansas, Lincoln Nebraska.

Then he gets into these best little small towns. The first one he lists is Bisbee, Arizona. It's funny, because since I've mentioned Bisbee, I've had all these people coming up to me saying, "Have you been to Bisbee lately?" And I said, "No." And they said, "It's incredible what's happening in Bisbee." Then he mentions just a ton of them. He mentions these emerging tech centers, almost all of them based around a college campus.

Spiritual Awakening

One of the things he identifies is a spiritual awakening that's taking place. People got to get out of that rat race. They were commuting two and a half hours a day. Now they're commuting five minutes a day. They're spending time with their kids, time with their family, time with their spouse. They're reconnecting all over the place, and faith and religion starts to play a role in this. Now, some of it gets a little goofy, but even fundamental orthodox, good, solid religion starts to come to play.

The Flying Lesson

On page 30, he writes this. Now he's in his learning to fly series: "Flying a small plane is said to be seven times more dangerous than driving a car and 40 times more dangerous than hopping on a commercial airliner. The risk is equal to driving a motorcycle. Mechanical problems with the plane itself account for a small percentage of accidents. The rest can be chalked up to human error, usually pilot error. Most fatal errors are caused by flying into clouds or evening haze without a proper understanding of instrument flying."

This is how John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and his sister-in-law met their ends on July 19, 1999. Beginning his descent from 5,500 feet into Martha's Vineyard in his new six-seat Piper Saratoga HP, young Kennedy lost the horizon in the evening gloaming. This is frighteningly easy to do. Lacking an obvious reference point, such as the horizon to check if the plane's wings are level, the average non-instrument rated pilot will lose control of his airplane in 45 seconds.

Trust Your Instruments, Not Your Feelings

Flying by gauges is a safer bet. Now listen, here's the point, but it's counterintuitive: "I know because one day while flying with an instructor through the clouds overlying Los Angeles, I became convinced we were nose down and losing altitude. All my instincts screamed at me to pull the yoke back and raise the airplane's nose. The gauges told another story. We were flying perfectly straight and level. Had I raised the nose, as every cell in my brain implored me to do, I would have slowed the plane's airspeed, perhaps to the point of a stall and a Kennedy death spiral."

Now I read that, and I immediately thought of the scripture. This is a perfect follow-up to that CD or tape that you have in front of you. What you know trumps what you feel. I'm flying along, and my instruments

In the midst of difficult circumstances, when our emotions and instincts pull us in one direction, we often face a choice between what feels right and what we know to be true. Sometimes the instruments of faith must override the turbulence of feelings.

The Scripture as Our Navigation System

Solomon understood this principle well. In Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Proverbs, Solomon writes: "These are wise sayings of Solomon, David's son, Israel's king, written down so we'll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it's going, a manual for living and for learning what's right and just and fair, to teach the inexperienced the ropes, and to give our young people a grasp on reality. There's something here also for seasoned men and women, still a thing or two for the experienced to learn, fresh wisdom to probe and penetrate the rhymes and reasons of wise men and women."

He's talking about his writings, but we can apply this to all of Scripture. This is written down to tell us how to live well, to tell us how to live right, to help us understand what life means and where it's going. It's a manual for living and for learning what's right and just and fair.

Tucked away in the middle of this book, Proverbs chapter 14, verse 12, Solomon writes: "There's a way that seems right to man, but in its end, it is a way to death." It's counterintuitive. As you read through the book of Proverbs, you'll see all these contrasts that Solomon uses. Here's what a wise man does. Here's what the fool does. And so often, when I read what the fool's doing, it makes a lot of human sense.

It's the fool who, for example, looks at the wine when it's red and it's ripe and gets swept away in the midst of all that. But it's the wise man who says no.

God's Ways Versus Our Ways

In Isaiah chapter 55, Isaiah writes, speaking of God: "My ways are higher than your ways. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts." In this world, you and I need to become, if you will, instrument rated. By that, I mean we need to put our faith and trust not in our own instincts, not in our own understanding, not in our own wisdom, but in what God says.

If God says something and your instincts say something else, just like when piloting that plane, I go with those instruments. God and all that He says and all that He teaches trumps what I feel.

The Truth About God's Character

A great example of this appears in Romans chapter 1. Paul's writing about mankind, and he says: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." God's angry. God's wrathful. You would never think that if you just listen to most people. They see God as this little teddy bear, this little Santa Claus, this little gentle person who's not upset about anything. But God is angry. What's He angry about? He's angry about sin.

Paul continues: "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and His divine nature are clearly seen. They're indisputable." You can't help but look around and see creation and see that there's something there and that it demands a creator. This creator must have been awfully powerful. That creator must have had an extraordinary eternal nature.

But most people suppress that. They deny that.

When Wisdom Becomes Foolishness

What's the result? Let me explain National Public Radio and PBS in one Bible verse, Romans 1:22: "Professing to be wise, they become fools." They profess to be very wise. They're way smarter than me. They can quote extensively, they've got more degrees than a thermometer. They've been educated, educated, educated. Wise. But when you listen to them, you kind of go, "That's really stupid. That doesn't make any sense."

I listened the other night to Jimmy Breslin on C-SPAN talking about a book he wrote. He's an Irish Catholic writer who's been in New York forever. He wrote a book slamming the Catholic church called "The Church That Forgot Christ." In it, he talks about starting his own religion. He's jaded and angry, as I'm discovering many Catholics really are. He said, "I'm starting my own religion, and I'm going to be a bishop. I know I'm fit to be a bishop because I'm not a pedophile or a pimp."

As he laid out this church, he must have said this phrase 30 times in 20 minutes: "I think, I think, I think, I think, I think." He put together this whole church based on what he thinks. Here's the problem: what Jimmy Breslin thinks, or you think, or I think, naturally, is often contrary to what God teaches. So we need to be really careful in this whole process.

By the way, Paul goes on after this and points out how man just disintegrates. That was the first thing for this discussion. There are three things today, and here's the second thing.

What We Read and What We Experienced

We were in Cannon Beach over Labor Day weekend at the Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center. I really encourage you—it's a great place.

So Randy Alcorn taught the first part of the week. I teach the second part of the week. We're done. They had brought in Johnny Ray Watson to do the music. Any of you know Johnny Ray? A couple, yeah, obviously John does. So Johnny Ray's doing the music. Johnny's an old friend, so it was fun to see him again.

Johnny's leaving on Labor Day that afternoon. We're going to leave the following day. They're going to drive Johnny into Portland to the airport and then come back. The lady who's driving him has become a pretty good friend of Susan's. So she said, "Suze, you want to go?" And she said, "Yes." They said, "Tom, do you want to go?" And I said, "No, not at all. I'm going to walk the beach." So they take off.

Now, we had heard that there'd been a car wreck on the first part of the highway. As I said, it's a 90-minute drive, probably 20 miles or so, maybe a few more, are two-lane highways. What I learned later is the trip that should—they said they'd be back about 5:30. At 5:30, the cell phone rang, and Susan said, "We just got here because all the traffic was backed up and they rerouted us. There was a bad wreck there."

An Unexpected Encounter

I'm walking the beach. Cannon Beach is about seven miles flat beach. I'm walking and walking and walking and walking, just walking along, beautiful day, walking. And all of a sudden, I realize, whoa, I've got to walk back. And I look back, and back was invisible. Back was around the bend somewhere. So I'm walking back, and I'm walking along. And now I've been out there walking a couple hours, easy. And I haven't talked to anybody, so I need to talk to somebody.

There's this lady standing there. There's this little girl, about three, I would guess, fire engine red hair, curly red hair. She just absolutely looked like this. She just looked like somebody you'd love to be around, but not parent. That's what she looked like.

So I said to the gal, I said, "Is that your kid?" She said, "No." She said, "That's mine. That's mine. That little boy way up in the hill with the man, that's my husband, and we're up there." I said, "Oh, wow, where are you from?" She said, "Oh, just over the hill here. We just came over for the day." And I'm not exaggerating. Literally within about two minutes, she seemed very distant, very disconnected, very uninterested in me, which bothered me.

So I said, "You doing all right?" And she said, "No." I said, "What's the problem?" She said, "We were coming over here today, and there was a car crash. And I was the first one on the scene. And there were two girls." She said, "I would guess that they were high school girls, maybe college freshmen." We found out the next day they were both 18.

A Tragic Reality

"And when I got there, they were both dead. And she said, it just had this incredible effect on me, and I can't stop thinking about it. I'm a Christian, so I know I'm secure, and I know I'm going to heaven. But what about them? They were on their way over, and they're probably driving along." And now she starts to just guess, probably coming over for the last day of summer break, school starting the next day, probably having this conversation about school, and where they're going to go, and when they graduate, and a boy, and maybe a man, all these things, and they're all gone.

The next morning, I got an alarm clock. And I can only get one radio station there. It's a country-western station. And I don't know much about country-western music. But he said, "We're going to play the number one song. It's been the number one song, country-western song, for nine weeks in a row by Tim McGraw. And it's called 'Live Like You Were Dying.'"

Let me just read you the first verse in the chorus. It starts this way: "He said I was in my early 40s with a lot of life before me, and a moment came that stopped me in a dime. I spent most of the next days looking at x-rays, talking about the options, and talking about sweet time. Ask him when it sank in that this might really be the real end, how it hits you when you get that kind of news. Man, what do you do? And he says, I went skydiving and rocky mountain climbing. I went 2.7 seconds on a bowl named Fu Manchu. I loved deeper. I spoke sweeter. I gave forgiveness. I've been denying. And he said, someday, I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying." The song after it, by the way, the chorus was, "I know what I was feeling, but what was I thinking?" It was a great song. But we'll stay on this for now.

Facing Mortality

I come back home. 9-11's being commemorated. And I watch this interview with this photo journalist who is taking these pictures as the first tower crumbles. And they're showing his pictures. And he's commenting on them. And he said, "I realized then I wasn't ready to die."

Now, you can figure all this out pretty quickly, because that reaches, for me, a point where I'm going to say to you, are you ready to die? Are you living like you're dying? There's kind of two separate questions there.

So as Christians, are we ready to die? Well, if you're here and you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, if you've come to that point in your life where you acknowledge your sin and that sin separated you from God and there's nothing you can do, that in and of yourself, whether you try to clean up your act and go to church, it doesn't matter. None of that matters as it relates to salvation, because there's nothing you can do. There's no act that you can perform. There's no church that you can join. There's nothing you can do to earn heaven.

The Gift of Salvation

Heaven is a gift. "For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." But "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus."

So you would expect me to go down that trail. I'm not going to. I'm going to make that point. Some of you know what that means. Those of you who don't, you need to talk to the person who invited

Living Like You're Dying

You need to figure this out. This is the most important issue you'll ever have to deal with. But most in this room would say they're Christians and probably are. My question to you is, are you living like you're dying? Are you living like you're going to live forever?

This is a book that we put together in our care ministry at our church called Preparing for Eternity. I'd give you all one, except we sell it for like $3, I think, and so I can't do that. In this book—and let me say this—if you've got adult children, you ought to get them this book and make them fill it out. Tell them you'll give them $500 if they fill it out. Make them deal with these issues.

It talks about all sorts of things. It talks about powers of attorney and organ donor and who should be contacted when you die and where are all your documents. Do you have your life insurance? Let me just say it again—if you don't have that, you're an idiot. Here's your funeral and who do you want to sing and what do you want them to sing. Here's a whole list of funeral homes that are helpful out in our area. Here's some books about death and dying. Here's hospice care and who to call. Here's some powerful scripture. All this great stuff.

What Do You Want to Be Remembered For?

But then there's this section at the very end. Basically what it says is this: After you die, there are a lot of people who want to speak about you. What do you want them to say? So it says, here's a bunch of information about where you were born and all that kind of obituary stuff. And then it says hobbies, interests, things, activities, organizations.

And then these two areas: Values and qualities that you'd like to be remembered for. Beliefs and truth that you can pass on to your loved ones. Now I think it's really important for you, not just to say, oh, I know what they are. I think it's important for you to declare them, to write them down. To say, here's what I want to be remembered for. Here are the core truths, the core beliefs of my life that I want passed on to those people that I love and care about. It may be family, it may be friends, it may be coworkers, I don't know. You need to write them down.

Now, here's a big question. Now you've got them written down. For us to say this, as you lay there in that casket, dead as can be, for us to say this about you, are we going to have to lie? See, that's a big deal. Because now you want to be remembered for all this and you want to pass these truths on. So here's the question: Are you doing anything at all about it? It's an important exercise. You need to be living like you're dying.

How We Deal with Age

My mother—I can't remember her ever sending me anything. My dad sends me articles all the time. He sends me all the obituaries. He sends me all the stuff from back home. If somebody I know is playing golf there, he'll send it, or baseball, or whatever he thinks. I don't remember my mom ever sending something. So she'll probably get the CD, and when she listens to it, say, "I send him stuff all the time." If she does, I don't get it. I don't remember it.

But when I got home from vacation, I had a stack of things from my mom, articles that she read, which was really cool. This was one in particular, and it was on aging. It was on getting old. It was talking about how we deal with age, and what he says is exactly right, and I've seen it in my life.

When I'm walking across campus at church, if somebody's got kids, the obvious question to try to connect with them, I'll say, "How old are you?" And they'll say, "Well, I'm going to be five." "Well, when?" "February." Well, you're four, you little liar. I mean, that's how old you are. You're not five. You're four. I don't say that, but that's how they are.

What happens is on the other end, we get that way too. So I'll run into some guy that's obviously old. I'll say, "How old are you?" And he'll say, "90." And I'll say, "I'm going to be 90." And I'll say, "Well, when?" And he'll go, "Well, I'm 81 now." That's kind of the way we like it.

I was listening to a guy the other day, and he was talking about a lady they interviewed who was 104. They asked her, "If there is a best part, what's the best part about being 104?" She never thought for a second. She fired back, "There's no peer pressure." That's pretty good.

How to Stay Young

So what this guy is trying to do is write this article, do kind of a witty introduction to get us to the point where he wants to tell us how to stay young. So he talks about how we transition through age and how we deal with age. How even our terminology that we use to talk about age and reaching an age indicates a little bit about what we think.

So he says, for example, you become 21, but you turn 30. But then you're pushing 40. All of a sudden you reach 50, and then you make it to 60. But apparently you've built up steam because you hit 70. Then after that, he says, it's just day by day at that point.

In this, he offers some advice on how to stay young. Now this has got a little bit of pop psychology, strong biblical base. But I'm going to share it, 10 things real quickly, 10 things in 10 minutes.

Number one: throw out nonessential numbers like age, weight, height. Let the doctor worry about it. That's why you pay him. Remember Satchel Paige, the old African-American pitcher, and nobody ever knew exactly how old he was. He pitched in the Negro Leagues, and no one really knew how old he was. So they were always trying to figure it out. Finally they ask him, "How old are you?" And he didn't respond with a number but with a question. Remember his question? "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?"

If you didn't have a birth certificate and a driver's license and a number, how old would you be? How old would you think? How old do you feel? That's an important thing.

Second thing, keep only cheerful friends that grouches pull you down. I think it's important, and I've learned that over the years. There are just certain people you can see. I don't even need to know them. I'll sit at like a Starbucks or somewhere and see everybody, and then I'll make up their life. I assume you do that too. So I categorize them. I mean, I determined I don't like this person at all, and I haven't even spoken to him yet, but that's okay.

Some people just look sad, grumpy. And there's a difference between a sadness that's broken over a tragic event. I mean just a sour face. They have a face that says no, that says stay away.

The Face That Says Yes

There's a great old story. Thomas Jefferson, when he was president, was out with a group of guys, and he's trying to survey an area, and they come to a river that's really raging, and there's a little young guy there, and they need to put him on another horse to get him across. And they start to put him on a horse. He said, I'd like to go with that man, and he points to Jefferson. So they put him on Jefferson's horse. They get him across. They ask him afterwards, why did you decide to ride with the president? And he said, I didn't know he was the president. He said this, he just had a face that said yes. And some of you got no faces, and you need to get rid of them.

And that point and the next one are things we talk about in our annual review, so I'll move quickly. Keep learning. Learn about computers and gardening and all that other stuff, but learn about Christ. That's what Paul says in Philippians 3. I got all this stuff, great stuff. I count it, but this is the King James, but dung as compared to the surpassing value, knowledge of knowing Jesus.

Enjoy the Simple Things

Here's the fourth thing. This is huge. Enjoy the simple things. There's a word that I use all the time. The staff, the people around me, anybody that I'm engaged with in any sort of a philosophical conversation, any time I'm talking with somebody one-on-one, and we're talking about serious life issues, here's the word I will use all the time, and the word is inertia.

Now, if you go to Webster, and Webster starts talking about inertia, he talks about the tendency of matter to remain at rest. That's not the part we're looking for. Or if it's moving, to keep moving in the same direction unless it's affected by some outside source. The inertia in your life, the way you're moving, will just keep going and just keep moving unless there's an outside force that intervenes.

If you don't grab control of your life, it will get very, very complicated very fast. I deal with a lot of young dads, and I'll talk to them, and here's what I hear. We're so busy, we're so busy, we're so busy. We never get to eat at home together. We never do this. We never do that.

The Problem with Overcommitment

And I'll say, well, tell me about it. And they'll say, well, we got a kid. We got one kid in volleyball and a kid in basketball, and the one in basketball is also taking guitar, and the volleyball player is also in dance. And then they list this thing out, and they say, what do you think? And I said, you're stupid. This is dumb. Listen, these kids are not supposed to run your family.

By the way, this is a lot about what we're going to talk about next week about parenting and grandparenting. We had a rule. We didn't have many rules at our house, but we had this one. You had an activity. You pick it. I don't care what it is. Lacrosse, cheerleading, I don't care. You pick it. But when that activity, that's it. We're not running all over this city just because you want to do this or you want to do that.

I was always telling the kids, remember, how many people are in our family? Four. No, two. Your mom and me, you two dropped in, and then you're going to blow out. But it's your mom and me. This is us two. You just are hanging on. We're giving you room and board, but you're out of here. You're not staying here. And we're not going to take our lives and flush them for you. And you're not running the ship.

Life Gets Complicated Fast

See, that's the way it will be at home. If you let these kids make all the decisions, or if you're the same way, you can do the same thing. You're going from work, and then you're working out, and then you're playing golf, and then you're doing this, and then you're doing that, and you're so busy. Life is going to get complicated very, very quickly. That's the nature of it.

I was reading a book yesterday on an 1800 election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. And Adams, back in those days, by the way, talk about the good old days. Back in those days, they didn't campaign. So how good would that be? But it's two weeks before the election, and Adams is leaving Massachusetts, and he's going back to the nation's capital. And just a throwaway line, after a 16-week vacation, in the heat of a campaign with an arch rival. But you know what? There's other things that need to get done.

Technology Can Enslave Us

And I watch this. I watch it all the time. It's like cell phones. When we were on this cruise, you're out in the middle of the ocean. You're in the middle of the ocean. You can use the phone in your room. If I remember, it's like $2 a first minute and a dollar every minute after or something. You're not going to make a lot of those calls. But you pull into Juneau, Ketchikan, or the minute you've got a cell phone, if you look out in the decks, you'll see all these guys out there with their cell phones.

And I don't get it. I mean, some things are – but now, here's this instrument that's supposed to free you up, and it's now got you captive in Sitka. I've got a cell phone. People all the time say, can I call you on your cell phone? I say, absolutely. They'll say, what's the number?

Laugh loud, laugh often, laugh long. Laugh! Oh, but we're sports Christians. There you go. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says there's a time to laugh. There's a time to relax. There's something therapeutic and positive about this.

What About Bob was on the other night. Here's what I'm doing: I'm giving you a prescription that gives you the permission to laugh.

When Tears Come

Here's the next thing: tears happen. Endure them. Grieve. There's a time to weep. There's a time to laugh. There's a time to mourn.

Life has in it a lot of painful stuff. It just does. It's the wear and tear of living. It's stress. It's everything that happens because there's birth, there's death, and we're going to have loved ones that we're going to lose. All those things happen.

Someone's written this: God whispers to us in our pleasures and speaks in our conscience, but He shouts in our pain. It's His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Pain happens.

Surround Yourself with Love

Real quickly, surround yourself with those people that you love. I left this all in here just because it's amusing, because he writes: whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants. Let me help you out here. If you're in love with your plant, come and see me afterwards because you've got major issues. You got problems.

But here's the last sentence he says: your home is your refuge. Do you understand? That's the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to be able to come into home and go, "Home at last!" Most of you run into home and it's just another battlefield.

One of the great things about many that Susan did is she allowed our house to be a home. In that home there was peace and serenity and calmness. No one was allowed to misbehave. If they did, including me, there were consequences to that. The rest of them identified that problem and we would say, "We just don't live that way."

Final Lessons

Real quickly, cherish your health. If it's good, preserve it. If it's unstable, improve it. If it's beyond that, get some help.

And then lastly, don't take guilt trips. Paul writes this in that Philippians 3 passage. He says, "You know what? I forget what lies behind and I press forward." That's some helpful advice.

If you want the notes to this, I see many of you writing, which is great. If you want the notes to this, you can go to our church website and download those. That website is EVBC - East Valley Bible Church - evbc.org. That's the message from two Sundays ago. You can go on there and all the notes, anything I read to you, and some other things are on there. You can grab those.

But in that, that's what I learned on my summer vacation.

Let's pray together. Father, thank You that we can come back together. Thanks for the men and women that are here. Hopefully...