The Principle of Opportunity
Tom Shrader explores the seventh principle in his series on authentic Christian living: opportunity. Drawing from the story of Gideon in Judges 6, he challenges believers to recognize their potential to impact people for eternity rather than accepting mediocrity. He emphasizes that God uses our weaknesses rather than our strengths, and encourages practical steps like personalizing the Great Commission in everyday encounters.
“You have an opportunity to impact people for eternity.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Recovering Our Lost Legacy
Recorded: July 14, 2005
Duration: 39 min
Themes: opportunity, potential, weakness, mediocrity, evangelism, destiny, impact, calling, feeling inadequate, doubting abilities, new believer, parent, mentor, accepting mediocrity, young adult, struggling with purpose
Scripture: Judges 6:1-16, Judges 6:12, Matthew 28
Theological Themes: great commission, evangelism, stewardship, gideon, judges, biblical calling, divine purpose, spiritual responsibility
Full Transcript
We are today in session 7 of an 8-session series, which means it's time to figure out what's next. But this series is one of those times—and I'm not sure this happens very often, maybe it doesn't and I don't realize it—where I've gotten into this session and into the material in maybe a broader or different way. I'll oftentimes get into series and see out of it come hybrids that we can do for a men's retreat or a message or a thought that I'll launch off on.
I've become convinced, which is scary, that this series in a large way explains what's missing in the culture. That you look at the demise of the culture around you and you see these principles we've talked about, like consequence. That there needs to be a consequence. There was an athlete last week who was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. I don't know if you read last night, the NFL is considering a two-game suspension. No, I'm just kidding—shot at the old NFL. But there has to be consequences.
And the principle of authority and things like duty and reverence and stewardship and significance, those are all things that at one time in our nation's history—so let's stay America-centric—those were givens. Those were assumed. Uncle Sam wants you, and it was assumed you'd respond to his call to want you. But now the armies had to hybrid that into "join us and be all you can be." Don't join us because you have a duty. Join us and we'll pay your student loan and help you be all you can be. The whole mindset is different. And it's hard to hold together a country or a company or a university or a church or a family or any organization without these in place.
A Difficult Topic to Articulate
Today is one of those topics that I need to acknowledge is hard for me, not because I don't believe it or get it, but hard to articulate it, hard to give it what I think is its appropriate emphasis. It's the principle of opportunity. And the way we're defining it is you—so I want to keep it personalized here. This is one of those things that I want to talk to you about your favorite topic: you, today. You have an opportunity to impact people for eternity.
So when I say opportunity, I don't mean investment opportunity or coaches conference opportunity, although this may indeed impact people for all eternity. So I want to talk and use things like need and potential and destiny. And I cringe from that because in one sense, it feels like I've seen in the Christian community, this kind of pendulum swing where a lot of people just become Tony Robbins with a Bible verse or two. God set you aside, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then again, that's true. So I don't want to overemphasize that. I don't want to deemphasize it. So I'm going to struggle all the way through with language. I'm going to count, and this could be a mistake, on you being able to figure this out.
What Happens When You Don't Get Opportunity
I want to follow the normal outline, normal meaning standard one we've used in this series. If you don't get the principle of opportunity, opportunity to touch other people, you're going to find these five characteristics that you won't understand.
Number one, you will accept things the way they are. You will have this tendency to say that's the way it's always been. We've always done it that way. That was the old Northwestern bell when you'd call them. It seems like maybe the first ones that I can remember. We've always done it this way. Well, there's not many businesses around that are going to use the "we've always done it this way" model anymore. You just say this is the way it is. I know it's not so, but it's the way it is, if I don't see opportunity for change.
Here's the second thing. You don't have memorable heroes. You don't have many heroes because you're not looking at doing things or changing things. If you're a guy in here, if you're a white guy in here, and that would be all but one or two of you, if you're a white guy in here who's 60 to 70 years old, your hero growing up in all likelihood was Mickey Mantle. Looking around the room, some of you, I'm pretty sure it was Babe Ruth, but that's all right. But you had heroes.
The Power of Heroes
I was watching one night a two-hour documentary on Roy Rogers. It almost sounds trivial. And I'm watching this thing, and I am hooked on this. And the impact that he had is he became one of the most popular figures traveling around the country. And I would, as a young boy, think I was Roy Rogers. I don't know why I would think that. But you kind of emulated those things, and you saw them. And I don't like animals, but I had an imaginary Trigger. Remember Roy's horse, Trigger?
When Trigger died, this is one of my all-time favorite Johnny Carson lines. When Trigger died, Roy had him stuffed and put in the living room. And Carson heard that and said, "Don't you know Dale's hoping Roy goes first?" And so Carson has classics. That's a classic.
But you had heroes. I don't know if my boys now, I watch them, because every game that's on, they flip through. And I'll say, "Who is that?" And they'll say something Cabrera. And then he does this, and they'll do that. And they'll have a guy, and I don't know any of them. And they know them all. But I don't know that any of them are heroes. It's almost more like a data trends plan. Where you were in here, and you thought you were Stan Musial. Or you thought you were Johnny Unitas. Or you thought you were Bob Cousy. I don't know that they do. But if you don't have this principle of opportunity, you don't have heroes.
The Challenge of Meaningful Dreams
Here's the third thing. You have no meaningful dreams. This gets a little scary, and I'll get, unfortunately, really autobiographical. As you get older, I think this gets a little bit tougher. I remember waking up one day in my typically thoughtful, morbid sense and concluding by lunch that my life had more memories than dreams. That probably anything that I was ever going to do of much significance was already done. And I think as you age, so I'm going to kind of jump into your world a little bit. I think as you...
As we age, dreams tend to dwindle and shrink. Life goes from changing the world to changing grandkids' diapers to simply wanting to grow a garden, shop organically, or eat Jell-O. It's like there's a food chain that you go down, and you just keep dropping down it. You go from growing your own food and starting your own business to simply eating whatever they bring you. All of a sudden, dreams become hard because they require future thinking, and opportunity feels gone.
Here's the fourth thing: you're convinced of your limited capacity. I have many terrible habits, I'm sure, but one of them is that I start an alarming number of sentences with the phrase "here's the problem." I worked and worked and worked on this. My friend Bob Shank said years ago, "Tom, every sentence is starting with 'here's the problem.'" So I said I had to work on it, and now I'll say "here's the challenge" - which looks like a problem from where I'm sitting, but I don't know. All of a sudden, it's all about what we can't do, what we can't do, what we can't do.
The fifth thing is you just accept all of this stuff. You accept it, and I've fought, as you well know, for the last year trying to convince you that you are average. Average doesn't mean anything otherwise. But average doesn't necessarily mean that you don't participate in anything or have any dreams or aspirations.
The D.L. Moody Example
There was a man by the name of D.L. Moody who was a shoe salesman in Chicago. Any of you who have been around for a while know him as this amazing evangelist - Moody Memorial Church and millions of people who could trace their family tree spiritually back to D.L. Moody. He was a 27-year-old shoe salesman who went into a service one night. By his own account, he was listening to a very average speaker drone on, and all of a sudden this guy said, "The world is yet to see what God is prepared to do to the life of just one person who was fully committed to Him."
That stopped Moody cold, and he went home. He writes in his autobiography about how this speaker didn't say anything about education or pedigree or wealth or experience, because Moody had none of those - no background, no pedigree. Moody's conclusion was, "By the grace of God, I'll be that person." And that unleashed this amazing life of his.
The Setting: Israel's Cycle
So that's the background. In terms of the setting, we'll use exactly the same format again. Our story today is taken rather loosely from the book of Judges, if you want to turn there, and I'll give you a little bit of history.
What's going on is what's going on throughout the history of Israel. We go back to Abraham and his family, Isaac and Jacob, and here's what happened: Israel would walk with God, they'd drift away, God would allow them to be captured, enslaved, defeated, they would bend to Him, He would prosper them, they would get arrogant, they would walk away, and God would allow them to be captured again.
There was a man - I'll use his name because he's since passed away - who was a good friend of mine named Brian Goldsworthy. Some of you know Brian. If you're a golf guy, Brian was the great guy to play with. He didn't hit it longer than anybody else, but he putted a little better than everyone else. He was the club champion at Phoenix for a billion years. His locker - those lockers at Phoenix have all those little medals on them - looked like a 28-star general holding water and everything. When he was sick with cancer and on chemo, he won the seniors men's championship at Forest Highland on the canyons course, which is a pretty big chore.
We went to study one day, a study in the life of David, and Brian had this habit where he'd rub his head when he got frustrated. I said, "B, what's the deal?" And he said, "I'm so sick of this David. He's so stupid. He sins, God bails him out. He sins, God bails him out. He does it again and again and again." I said, "You know what bothers me is not David, but that he's a lot like me."
So this is the story of the nation of Israel, but in reality, these are just things that we can learn from them.
Recognizing Your Needs
Number one: you need to recognize your needs. Judges 6:1, 5, and 6 - you have the references on your outline. "The Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord, and for seven years, He gave them into the hands of the Midianites. And they came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels. They invaded the land and ravaged it."
There is this need. In a sense, it's where we are now as a nation - desperately seeking revival. There is that need where you are weak, dependent, tending to follow the last voice you hear, wanting to have your ears tickled. There's a need.
Accepting Your Calling
Here's the second thing you see, again from the book of Judges: you need to accept your calling. "The angel of the Lord came and sat down where Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress. And the Lord came and appeared to Gideon and said, 'The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.'"
Now this is biblical humor. He's threshing wheat, not up on the hill where you need the wind and the breeze to do it, but down in the valley in the winepress, probably overcome, probably defeated, perhaps afraid. We have no audible recording of this, as you well know. I don't know if the Lord said, "The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior," or "The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior."
You might be weak and defeated and feel that way, but remember who you are. This is where I break down a little bit. I get a little uncomfortable with all the "you're more than a conqueror, you're more than that" talk. No, you are nothing, but He who's in you is really something. You are a mighty warrior - you see it in Judges 6:12 - because the Lord is with you.
Expanding Your Perspective
You need to, third thing, expand your perspective. Gideon replies and says, "If the Lord is with us, why did all this..."
happen to us? Where's all His wonders that our father told us about when they said, did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? But now the Lord has abandoned us."
Don't answer, don't shake your head, don't tip your hand, but aren't there times when you feel a little bit like Gideon, where God has said, "You're a mighty warrior," and you're going, "Really? Where's God right now?" If God's such a great God, why am I sitting here in this waiting room with this spot on my lung and my 14th round of chemo, and I can't even eat a bowl of chicken noodle soup?
That's what we had on 9-11. Where was God on 9-11? Has He abandoned the U.S.? Has He abandoned us? Well, here we had to think about it a second. He was on 9-11, exactly where He was on 9-10 and 9-12, and will be forever. He's on the throne.
Suffering and God's Sovereignty
The topic they gave me, this could discourage you from being there this Sunday, is on suffering and perseverance, and why do we suffer? And you all who are veterans of PL, you know the shtick here, and we know God causes all things to work together for good, we know that. We also know that we're supposed to count it all joy when we encounter various trials, because the testing of our faith produces endurance.
The whole point of us, as we remember and look back in those Old Testament, we see these amazing things that God did. Those are the things that He's done in your life. 2,000 years ago, Christ died so that you could be here today, and you have not just eternal life, but you have the abundant life. You can enjoy this life for what it was meant to be.
The fear, the pain, the agony - you have a solution to that, because your fundamental problem wasn't economic, right? We saw it last week. Guy's got a 40 million dollar contract. He still kills somebody. It's not educational. There's this big battle that's going on. He ends up serving time in prison. I think it's in Georgia where some of these PhDs got together and started jimmy-rigging tests and scores. Their problem wasn't educational. It's not political. Your fundamental problem is sin, and Christ solved that.
Getting the Right Perspective
And now He says for you, "I want you to get your perspective, and I want you to get your perspective beyond just the immediate circumstances around you." It may look one thing, but what is reality?
I'm watching a show. I don't know if any of you are watching it, and I can't tell you what station it's on, nor the channel number, nor the name. It isn't very helpful at this point. This illustration's losing its impact as we go, but there's a show on called Brain Games. I don't know if any of you are watching it, and it's on the brain and how it works.
There's a show where they have six ballet dancers, and they have three spotlights. And so they say, "Just watch the ballet dancers in the spotlight, and count them." So they play it back, and "How many did you get?" And, you know, I don't know, 15. They said, "Watch it again, but kind of look" - as they're doing it, there's like a guy dressed like a penguin walking through. There's all this stuff walking through. You didn't see it. Your brain is so focused.
Well, this can happen here. You get so focused on the hurt and the pain. That's my constant problem - somebody will say, "How are you?" And I expand into a two-hour discussion on my anguish. This is not about me and my pain, but I make it that. Why? That can become all-absorbing. And He's saying, "Listen, get your eyes off of this. What God in the past did, He'll do for you again."
Abandon Your Resume
It's the next thing on your outline. And that is, I want to make sure I'm tracking with you here. Abandon your resume. Your resume is impressive in terms of perhaps what you've done, but it's more of what you've done than necessarily what you'll do.
But Lord Gideon said, because he's been told you're going to save Israel, "How am I going to save Israel? I'm the weakest. I'm from the weakest family and I'm in the least of this family." It was the same thing that Moses did. "I was never strong. I was never articulate."
God's going to come at the appropriate time, give you something to do, give you opportunities, and He's not going to give you the opportunity without giving you the strength to carry it out. So in this case, I want to pursue my potential. "The Lord turned to him and said, 'Go in the strength you have and save Israel. Am I not sending you?'" It's this idea of understanding what God's gifted you to do so you can - and again I just cringe at the language - fulfill your destiny. So that you can do the things that God either called you to do or presented the opportunities.
Recognizing Your Strengths
So I can become so focused on my weakness that I forget to see my strengths. And everybody's wired and gifted differently.
We have a guy in our church who is a - I don't know the language here. I'll say really bad. Certainly poor. I won't say atrocious - teacher. He's just not very good. Okay. I'm not saying I'm great, but I am standing next to him. Okay. He's not any good. But you give him an assignment with a deadline and you have him deal with people and this guy is world class. I couldn't do that in a million years.
It's Sandy and me living together and just the way she's wired. I mean, she just moves. She's a shark. She's constantly moving with activity and a project and a deadline and she thrives in that. And I hate this. For a month I've had to go, "There's an outside shot I'd never get a passport because I don't want to go anywhere." There's an outside shot we might go up toward Vancouver at the end of the summer. So you need a passport.
For 30 days, I've driven by 500 Walgreens that says "passport picture" and I'll say, "I bet there's a line." And I'm taking a shower this morning. I said, "All right, this is the day to do it. You got a little extra time. Go in." I thought, "Well, I wonder if I can wait and pay to have it expedited." It's the way I am. Sandy would be on a plane to Washington saying, "Stamp this thing right now. We don't have time for this."
However you're wired, God's made you this way and God's given you this job to do. Not out of your strength—this is where it sounds like double talk—but out of your weakness. It started with recognize your weakness.
So Gideon has about 35,000 men. Midianites have about 130,000 men. It's time to get this going. Gideon's concerned about the size of his army, but so is God. Gideon says, "I'm concerned about the size of the army." God said, "Me too." Gideon said, "I'm glad to hear that." God said, "You've got way too many people."
He said, "Really?" So God cuts it down and cuts it down. You know the story, many of you from Sunday school. God now has Gideon and 300 men to take on the 135,000 man army.
God Uses Our Weakness
So Gideon goes, "Okay, well, I bet the strategy is we got this mountain. We'll protect it as they come up. We'll just pick them off. I guess that's what we're going to do." God says, "All right, get them all together. Here we go. Charge."
The idea here is not to take this and do a paper and take it to West Point and say, "This is our new military strategy." It's God saying, "This is how I work in your life. You won't like this. You're always in over your head. You're always in way beyond your ability." Anything you can do is something God gave you to do.
There's a guy—I won't name him—but he's a pastor. He's older than me. When I first got saved, he was really established. I heard him on the radio and he had this incredible voice. It's the voice that I assume when I get to heaven, it's what God's going to sound like. He had this incredibly handsome, tall, always wore this—it wasn't blue, it wasn't gray—kind of this charcoal, blue gray, sophisticated suit with a white shirt, usually with a tie bar, bold rep stripes.
When he spoke, never a stutter, never a stammer. He was amazing. Every time he finished, I would hear people say, "Isn't he amazing? Isn't he amazing?" God used him and he was amazing.
I'll go do this men's retreat next week. I'll stutter and stammer and I've forgotten my notes and screw it all up. When I'm done, people will say, "Isn't God good?" This is the whole point. God doesn't use our strength. He uses our weakness. When I'm weak, I'm strong.
It doesn't mean abandon your mind. It doesn't mean for this guy to all of a sudden dress down and stutter and stammer and use words inappropriately like I do. It means even in that strength, it's a strength that God gave him.
Your Opportunity for Eternal Impact
Now we put all that together to get to the principle, which is you have the opportunity to impact people for all eternity. You can help them with their skills. You can help them with their job. You can give them all sorts of input, but you can impact people for all eternity.
We have a baseball game tonight. The boys do. It's a 7:30 game. That's a pretty late first pitch for me. Tyler and I were talking the other day and I was talking about the boys in baseball. He sent me a text. He said, "I've been thinking about that ever since you said it."
I texted back and said, "I love to watch the boys play baseball. I love to watch them play. I love to see their personalities." They got just shelled the last game by Mr. Berger's team, who coached his team and abused us a little bit, but I didn't say anything about it. We didn't play well. They played very well. They just got killed.
I can't wait tonight to see, because they've been talking about getting killed for a week and thinking about it. Brayden was having a hard time throwing strikes. Yale never sees any deficiency in his game, but he certainly has seen the problem in the other guys on the team. How will they play tonight? What do they do? I love to watch that.
I love that they'll come over maybe tomorrow or Saturday and I'll text Haley and say, "Send them over because I'd like to talk about the game." I'll say, "What did you learn? Not what did you get?" Everybody can applaud for a double or whatever. But how about when you hit a cutoff guy? Because not many guys do that. I love to see them perk up, but I love to see their interest.
But far more important is to understand that I have the impact to introduce them and have them understand what it means to walk with Christ. You have that. Not just with your grandkids. Grandkids seem easy to me. Kids were the easiest. I love that. Grandkids are harder than kids. But the barista, the lawn guy, the neighbor, everybody.
Practical Steps for Impact
Here's some practical input. Number one, personalize the Great Commission. Matthew 28, the Great Commission. I'll read it to you the way we hear it: "Go make disciples of all nations." In the original language it would read this: "Go make disciples." The idea of the Great Commission is as you go, as you pull through the drive-in window, as you're hitting balls in the range and the kids cleaning your clubs, as you're at the gym.
I was at church the other day. It was not Scottsdale Bible Church, but I was at a church. This guy—absolutely, just getting out of the parking lot—came out of an elevator. Just trust me, it was wrong. We got up to the red light and he looked over and saw it was me. I went into a restaurant and he came in behind me and he said, "I'm really sorry." Okay, that's good. "I didn't know it was you."
Well, who did you think it was? If you're going to cut somebody off, I'm the guy to cut off. Not the lady that cuts your hair, the guy that does your lawn. Understand and personalize the Great Commission.
Second, set aside your own limitations, and by that I mean the self-imposed ones. The things that are holding you back, get them better. The movie Malcolm X was on the other night and I enjoy—I don't know if that's the correct word—but I certainly like to read Malcolm and I enjoy the movie.
He was in prison and realized in his mind he had a message that he wanted to communicate, but he realized that he had a huge problem and that was he didn't know how to communicate. So you know what he studied? You think I'm boring. You know what he studied? The dictionary. Because the limitation he had was self-imposed. He hadn't put forth the effort, he was capable of doing it.
You have some of those self-imposed limitations, whatever they are, get better at them in a realistic way.
Evaluate Your Distinctives
Number three is evaluate your distinctives. What do you do well? What is it that comes natural? I've spent two or three years, I'm in the middle of all this which sounds weird, trying to figure out what I do well and all I can come back to is this, is to teach. I don't write well. Everybody always says write a book. That must be everybody's answer to you know they don't know what to say or how are you doing. Write a book. And I said about what? To who? I don't write my mother. I don't know how to write. I can't write a sentence.
I'm talking one day and there's a lady that came up to me and she said this is the last time I'll be here and I said I'm sorry are you moving? She said no. And I said what's the problem? She said you dangle participles all the time. So I said to her what's a participle? I don't know. But figure out what you do. Stay in the sweet spot.
You can take a mile run along the beach and you can run up where the sand is puffy and full and slow or down where the tide's gone out and it's like concrete. You can run the same mile with a whole less effort down here. So do what you do well.
Crystallize Your Vision
Number four and I do what I say not what I do. Crystallize your vision. Get a plan and I'll make my pitch here. Let me check time because it's close. Three minutes.
I thought this was more important when you were younger. I've concluded it's important all the time. What's my plan? Where's my spot? I don't know that it has to be in a three-ring binder but it's a vision for how God's going to use me. It's maybe an issue that captures your heart.
Remember my mom who is not a communicator and not a writer. My mom was none of those things but she got committed to the abortion movement and to saving babies and she heard that they needed down at their version of crisis pregnancy center booties and all of a sudden she was working like she was working in a sweatshop in Thailand cranking out booties. She's cranking out booties at the speed of light and every time you went to see her she'd hold up look at these and she made them all a little bit different and she had her vision and I forget what her number was how many booties she was going to make in a week or a month or whatever but it was I know that's kind of in a way far less than what you were thinking but it may be helpful for you to not think so big. Some of you are trying to think of some strategic plan to change the world. You might start by making a pair of booties.
I spoke Saturday night at Desert Springs Bible Church to a graduating class of their leadership team and one of my points to them was think small because you all have this giant plan you're going to do this and start this and move this and there'll be a foundation and we'll get funding and we'll do this and we'll get all the typical guys together for a letterhead and that'll give us credibility. I don't know all I know is get a plan for what you're going to do and then go do it.
Stay Focused
And the last point is just kind of obvious just get focused. Stay focused on it. Remember the objective. I mean one of the things that has been a gift for me in my life as I've gotten a little bit sicker is I can do less and less and less. So basically it's priority living and Redemption Church and a few other organizations and I can't do anything else. If I could I'd be all over the map.
So here's the whole point in this principle and continuing kind of pattern we've been in. In this principle of opportunity you can impact people for eternity but by being the person God's called you to be and not even going out of your way I mean in the normal flow of life. Just today don't do anything just look today around how many people God brings into your life that you have some sort of relationship that might be as simple as saying double mocha and thank you. But you see these people on a regular basis. They should see something different in you and many times they're going to say to you there's something different or you're going to be there the day they lose their mom. The day the spouse leaves and you're going to be the one God uses to touch that person.
Next week we tie this all together with the principle of faith.
Father thank you for this amazing truth in this day. It looks like it's going to be a weather-wise beautiful day. God use us in a way that brings honor and glory to You and make it an extraordinary day. Thank You for the men and women that are here. Got a lot of places they could be this morning and to be here is a testimony to the work that Your Spirit's doing in and through this time together. Father use it for Your honor and glory we pray in Christ's name amen.