1 Kings 18-19 - Stability Admidst Difficult Circumstances

Tom Shrader examines Elijah's mountaintop victory over the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18, followed by his dramatic collapse and flight from Jezebel in chapter 19. Using Elijah's experience, Tom defines stability as both firmness of character and the capacity to return to equilibrium after displacement. He warns that we are often most vulnerable after great success, and teaches that true stability comes from spiritual consistency rather than temporary circumstances.

“The enemy of stability is worry, and for us to be afraid, for us to worry, you don't think of it this way, is a sin.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: How to be Exceptional in an Average World

Recorded: March 17, 2011

Duration: 38 min

Themes: stability, consistency, perseverance, victory, defeat, mountaintop, valley, equilibrium, after spiritual victory, feeling overwhelmed, recovering from failure, pastor, leader, spiritual mentor, facing discouragement, seeking consistency

Scripture: 1 Kings 18, 1 Kings 19, 1 Kings 18:21, 1 Kings 18:23, 1 Kings 18:36, 1 Kings 19:1, 1 Kings 19:2, 1 Kings 19:14, 1 Kings 19:15, 1 Kings 19:18, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Romans 8:28, Genesis 3

Theological Themes: spiritual warfare, providence, spiritual disciplines, sanctification, biblical narrative, old testament, spiritual maturity, divine sovereignty

Full Transcript

Session two of what will be six weeks, the theme: how to be exceptional in an average world. Candidly, it's getting easier to do. We're going to look today at 1 Kings 18.

Here's the whole premise: the world as a standard and the world as it encounters life responds in one way. We're going to suggest that you respond in a different way. We're going to talk today about stability.

Defining Stability

On your outline, you have a definition and this whole lesson is built around the second part of the definition. When I say stability, first part you get: a firmness of character. When we say stability, we think rock solid. But it's the second part of that definition. The capacity to return to equilibrium after being displaced.

So stability to me thinks rock solid, almost immovable, and this brings a nuance to it. That's what the whole lesson is built around the second part of that definition. In life you have what we all identify different ways, but you have cycles of life, you have episodes, whatever you want to call them. The real world, you have your ups and downs.

We began this series by talking about peaks and valleys. Last week we talked about mastering the mundane. So we talked about the ordinariness of life and the reality that most of our life is lived either in a valley or ascending to or descending from a peak. We don't live on these peak experiences, these mountaintop high experiences. Those are rare.

Life's Reality: Most Time is Mundane

Even if you're somebody who's a secret agent, you're an espionage and a spy, you're only spending a fraction of your time in those intimate, dark, fighting type issues. Think if you're an Olympic athlete and your sport is a sprint, you're spending hours and hours and hours for that roughly 10 second sprint.

In our life, we need to master the mundane and for me personally, I think that's a huge deal. So in the midst of all this, I find meaning. If you're my daughter, I find meaning in changing a diaper. You find meaning in the ordinariness of your life.

When we talk about stability, our role model for this study is a guy by the name of Elijah. Elijah is coming off of a mountaintop experience.

Elijah's Challenge to Israel

In 1 Kings chapter 18, Elijah has a moment that many of you are familiar with, certainly familiar with His response. It's 1 Kings chapter 18 verse 21: "Elijah came near to all the people and said, how long will you hesitate between two options? If the Lord is God, follow Him. If Baal, follow him." Here you go. This is what happens with a group of people. They didn't answer.

"Then Elijah said to the people, I am all alone, left a prophet of the Lord and Baal has prophets of 450 men." So you get the scene, and this is a tense scene. Here's a nation of Israel, they've been intermingled, they've been influenced by Baal and the prophets of Baal. God through Elijah is now challenging them and said, "Listen, you're going to follow Me, you're going to follow Baal." They don't answer, they're silent.

The Contest Proposal

So Elijah says, "Well, let's try something here." Verse 23: "Now let them give us two oxen, let them choose one of the ox for themselves and cut it up and place it on an altar on wood, but no fire under it. And I'll prepare the other ox and I'll lay it on wood, put no fire under it. Then you call on the name of your God and I will call on the name of the Lord. And the God who answers by fire, He is God." And all the people said, "That's a good idea." Everybody loves something like that.

So here's what He's going to do, we're going to do a test. So Baal, you pick the ox, so I'm not into this, you get them, you take yours, cut them up, put them on this altar of wood and nothing under, no fire or anything under it. I'll take whatever ox you don't take and then we'll just start calling on God. And we're going to find out right now which God is the real God.

Baal's Prophets Fail

"So Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose one of the ox for yourself and prepare it first for you are many and call on the name of the Lord your God and put no fire under it. And then they took the ox which he had given them and they prepared it and they called on the name of Baal from morning until noon saying, oh Baal, answer us. But there was no voice, there was no answer. And they leaped about the altar which they made."

So you can start to almost see the comical side of what's taking place here. "It came about at noon that Elijah mocked them and he said, call with a loud voice for he is God. He is either occupied or gone aside or he's on a journey or perhaps he's asleep and needs to be awakened." This actually loses a little bit in the translation, literally what he's saying is perhaps he's in the toilet. Perhaps he's gone to John. Maybe he's dozed off.

"So they cried with a loud voice and cut themselves according to their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out of them. When midday was passed, they raved until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention."

Elijah Prepares His Altar

"Then Elijah said to all the people, come near to me. So all the people came near to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord which had been torn down." Maybe in all this chaos they had knocked His altar down. "Elijah took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of Israel, of Jacob, to whom the word had come and He said, Israel shall be your name. So with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two measures of seed. Then he arranged the wood and cut the ox into pieces and laid it on the wood."

"And then he said, fill four pitchers of water and pour it on the burnt offering, on the wood and do it a second time and they did. Do it a third time and they did. And the water flowed around it and filled the trench." So you get it? He's trying to make this so this is clearly not some trick that he did, not something that he came up with. So I want you to soak this thing, fill this thing, drench this.

At the time of the offering and the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet came near and said, "O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, today let it be known that you are the God of Israel and that I am your servant and that I have done all these things in your word. Answer me, O Lord. Answer me that the people may know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have turned your heart back again." Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering. The story goes on and extends that.

So Elijah has this moment, this mountaintop experience. He has defeated the prophets of Baal.

When Success Becomes Vulnerability

Stop the tape, make this point. We are oftentimes most vulnerable when we have these times of greatest success. So often we think he's down and out, he's hurting, she's in real trouble, she's vulnerable. That may indeed be true. But I will tell you from my own experience and from spending a lot of time with a lot of people, when things are not just going well but going great is a time when you are particularly vulnerable.

When the deal closes, when things come together, you may say, "Oh God, thank you." But in your mind you're going, "Bless? Why wouldn't He bless me? Look how sharp I am. Look how clever I am. Look how I made that deal work." And all of a sudden that's perfect because that's right. Pride comes right before the fall, right in the midst of all of that. That's been my experience for 30 years now. When things are going good, you become self-sufficient, at least thinking. You start to think you're something special.

We're teaching James right now on Sunday, just got done with a wonderful passage. God is opposed to the proud. The word opposed means in full battle ready. It's not that He's neutral. He's opposed to the proud and gives grace to the humble.

The Prophet's Plight

So here is Elijah. He's got, to be honest with you, a crummy job. He's a prophet. It's an awful job. You speak the truth and then everybody just beats the snot out of you. It is a bad, it's a crummy job. And none of these prophets are ever happy. Nothing great ever happens to them in terms of fun. They never have fun.

He has this moment, Ahab and Jezebel, especially Jezebel at this point, frustrated with him. So what happens is, verse 36, the hand of the Lord was on Elijah, he girded his loins, and he outran Ahab to Jezreel. Here comes, he stood against them all, here comes this gal, her people, and he turns and he runs.

The Enemy of Stability

So here you go, stability, the ability now to bounce back, to regain equilibrium. The enemy of stability is worry. Worry and fear, they go hand in glove. Jesus in the center of the Sermon on the Mount says, don't worry about what you're going to eat, don't worry about what you're going to wear, don't worry about today, certainly don't worry about tomorrow, it has enough problems of its own. The most frequent prohibition that Jesus gives us in the New Testament is, do not be afraid.

This is really important now, for us to be afraid, for us to worry, you don't think of it this way, is a sin. So here's what happens, we have certain sins, we just institutionalize it. So somebody comes along, well in fact, at everything, at every Christian thing I go to, what do they have? Food, donuts, cake, pie, and then I'll look at somebody and I go, "Well, you know, he's a little heavy, he just likes to eat." If he just liked to drink, would you give him beer? You just throw this food, oh yeah, when we institutionalize it, we institutionalize certain sins and say they're okay.

Here's one of them, worry. "Oh, she's just that way, he's just a worrier." When I worry, here's what I'm saying, I'm saying to God, "I don't trust you."

The Nature of Fear

I was driving the other day in the parking lot, kid in a bike came and I just missed this kid. So the guy in the bike goes right by me, my heart is racing, I thought I killed this kid for sure. I'm not saying when something like that happens your heart doesn't jump or you're not afraid, what I'm saying is, if you go to the doctor, I had a guy the other day, his name's Tom, his wife's name's Susan, he comes up and he had cancer in his colon, they took out a bunch of colon and everything, it's back, it's in his lungs, it's in his stomach, it's metastasized and it's all over him.

And he said, "I'm trying to figure out how not to be afraid in the middle of that." So here's what I'm saying, if the doctor tells you that, you're going to have that moment, I think, where you kind of, it kind of takes your breath away. And I know this sounds trivial on the surface, but it's deep and profound, is I tried to say to him, "What's the worst thing that can happen to you?" And he said, "Die." And I said, "No, live. The worst thing that can happen to you is to live. The best thing that can happen to you is die. You go to heaven, I thought."

I don't understand why so many people want to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. And again, I'm not there, I don't live there, I'm not facing it. If what we say is true, I don't understand why that would be the worst thing that can happen to you. I say it all the time, "How you doing today?" "Better than the alternative." Really? To me, the alternative is a lot better than this.

The World's Solutions

This will show you how the world thinks. There's two PhDs, they wrote a book, Not to Worry, and they gave eight suggestions to free yourself from anxiety. Here you go, I'll give them to you real quick. Hey, I don't need to write them down. Number one, turn them into absurd stories. So take whatever makes you anxious and take it to its extreme and then laugh at it. Number two, use magic guns or bows or arrows to shoot your worries away. You can feel this almost working for you now, right?

Use waterfalls and fast streams to carry your troubles away. Number four, melt them or burn them and send them into orbit. Number five, you pay a hundred and a half an hour for this. Invent dragons to breathe fire and burn

The Problem with Modern Anxiety Management

Number six, turn your worries into a big balloon. Number seven, wrap your worries carefully and send it to the dead letter office, which my experience is it's not much different than the live letter office. Number eight, put your worry on film, speed it up, slow it down, hear the voices, scratchy high, slow, watch the characters, race or crawl. This is the kind of stuff, like PBS right now, which should have been, should have never been funded to start with, but they're doing this fundraising stuff now and they got these idiots on there with this, just imagine this, just imagine what? Just let it drift away.

That is not helpful. There's no power in pretending it isn't real. If you don't have a job, that ain't helping.

The Foundation of True Stability

Now here's the overall premise, then we'll break it down from Elijah. 1 Corinthians 15:58, Paul says, "therefore," so whenever you see a therefore, you got to figure out what's the therefore therefore. It's therefore because he's summarizing, it's 1 Corinthians 15. What's 1 Corinthians 15? Resurrection chapter.

He said because all this is true, because he's built this case, he said if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then this whole thing is a waste of time, but because He did, "therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm." There's the stability, there's the bounce-back, there's the return to the equilibrium. "Stand firm, let nothing move you, always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that in your labor in the Lord, it's not in vain, it's not useless." This isn't a waste of time.

If you love me, Jesus says, I'm going to know it. Here's how I'm going to know it. Not because you tell me, though that's good, not because you go to church, fine. He said there's one way you're going to love me. You'll keep my commandments, and I'll begin to see in you two things now. Faithfulness that results in fruitfulness. I'll start to see those things.

What Instability Costs Us

If you're not stable, so we took the negative. I always like doing that. God's power is wasted on you. The very thing that we saw. Here is Elijah with this moment, this amazing moment at Mount Carmel, and now he turns and runs away.

Let me give you this real quickly. If God's given you something to do, He's going to give you the time and the power to do it. God's not going to give you something to do and not give you the time or the power. So I hear all the time from people, I'm too busy to do what God's called me to do. No, you've either misunderstood what He's called you to do, or you've loaded your life up with a bunch of other stuff. If God gives you this power and you don't stand firm in the midst of it, there's a wasting in it.

The Pattern of Spiritual Collapse

Number two, your success will be short-lived. Well, you can obviously get the picture there. In chapter 19, verse 1, Ahab told Jezebel, now Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. He's telling him this in the midst of his running away, and now comes all of the suffering and all of the pain.

You see now, Elijah moved, and this is what sin and fear will do. It moves you into an irrational response. Coming off this great emotional victory, real victory, the messenger comes to Elijah, it's verse 2, "May the gods deal with me." Now, this is coming from Jezebel. So this is an oath, a promise. "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I don't make your life like one of them," one of those that were killed, and Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.

The Nature of Fear and Irrational Behavior

Irrational behavior flows from sin and fear. So the first instance of a rational behavior in all of mankind is in Genesis 3. Adam eats the fruit and immediately hears God and covers himself. He operates and reacts in an irrational way.

All fear for us is irrational. Not saying it isn't real, not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just saying if you stop, either this stuff is real and true or it isn't. So He says He's going to take care of you. He says He's going to deliver you. He says greater is He that's in you than that's in the world. He says that He will meet all your needs. He may not meet them exactly like you like them met, but for me to fear tomorrow is saying to God, I can't trust you.

Again, I got how scary life is. I get it. I get the circumstances that come. To me, irrational is saying, pretend they're a balloon and pop them. That's stupid. How helpful is that?

The Creator's Control Over All Things

Here's our answer. Our answer is to say there's nothing in the sphere of creation that is outside the control of the Creator. So that everything that happens in my life, what I perceive as good or bad or neutral, everything that happens in my life is either caused by or allowed by God. And He tells us in His word, Romans 8:28, that God causes all things to work together for good.

By the way, watch, I was telling my brother Monday night, I said, isn't it amazing to see the response of the people in Tokyo as compared to the response to the people in New Orleans during Katrina? They're lined up having a cigarette and taking pictures of each other over there. It's amazing to me in just a systematic way. Now it may break out here in chaos soon, but even in the midst of that, why does all that happen?

Well, I can give you the grand answer, because I got it. Adam sinned and screwed this whole thing up. And now you have physics and geology and all that stuff at play, and these things happen, and they happen ultimately for a reason, and though I can't always at the moment see why, I can give you the grand theme, for your good and for God's glory.

The Christian's Perspective on Suffering

So I'm not there. I'm sure I would be filled with all sorts of feeling and emotion and terror, but for the Christian, we know that that moment right there is as close to hell as they're ever going to be. It's the fourth thing in your outline. When all of a sudden you're not stable, you don't want to persevere, you want to give up. When Elijah came to Beersheba and Judah, he left his servants...

there, and while he himself went a day's journey into the desert, he came to the broom tree and he sat under it and he prayed that he might die. "I've had enough, Lord, take my life. I'm no better than my ancestors."

It's a graphic picture of how we shouldn't live. Years ago, I did a message. I cannot find the tape, I cannot find the notes, but I will tell you this, it was a classic. You got Luther, you got Calvin, Spurgeon, and this message is right there, and the name of the message was "It's Worth It." All it did was—and it's the same thing I do every week—all it did was reorient us and recalibrate things to see things from God's perspective.

A Lesson from Grandchildren

I got just a hint the other day. Monday, boys wanted to come over and have donuts and play chutes and ladders. If I ever meet the guy who invented chutes and ladders, I'm going to put a bullet in his head. It's the dumbest game, I hate that game, I can't win it, it's a stupid game, I hate the game.

So they're eating donuts, playing chutes and ladders, and I'm up there ready to win, and I hit one of those stupid chutes, and anyway, I never win. But I hit Lucy, so Lucy's now eight weeks. Just now starting, and so I'm down, and what I try to do is to get her to make sure she sees me, and then move to see if she can track with me.

Then I start talking to her and start making some noise to see if I can get her to smile and see if she reacts, and get her used to my voice, and just rub her arms and her little legs. Then Haley fed her, changed her, fed her, changed her, changed her, changed her. While the other two boys are going, "Mom, I don't want to go, Mom, I don't want to go."

"Well, it's time to go, let's get in the car." "I don't want to get in the car, I want to stay with Nana. They don't care about me, I want to stay with Nana. Can we stay here and play? There's one more, the ducks are coming." And I said to Haley, "You got to go, get them out of here. It's time to go."

I called her about an hour later, and you can just hear in the back, they're yelling, screaming—I don't mean yelling at her, I mean they're playing ball, throwing balls, it's just chaos. And she said, "Dad, it really helps when you remind me that it's not going to always be like this."

The Worth of Difficult Seasons

But you got to, man, I keep coming back to child rearing. If you take it seriously, it's worth it, but it's real work. There's moments, I have them, and I mean this, I have no bucket list. I've done everything I want to do. I got nothing, I'm going, I don't know, what? Go to Italy? Are you kidding me? I don't want to go anywhere where ruins is your highlight. I just don't. I mean, come and see this. Here's a building we've had to prop up.

I don't have a bucket list. I mean, honestly, because I think about dying all the time. I just, you know, I hope it goes fast. So I can get like this: "God, I just want to die. But you don't want me to, apparently." But boy, when you're fatigued, when you don't have that stability, you don't have that perseverance, all of a sudden, you just want to cave in.

Faithfulness and Fruitfulness

It's number five. You'll see faithfulness, but there's a futility to it. Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" And he replied, "I've been very zealous for the Lord. I've been very faithful."

Well, in the midst of this, and I just connected, in the midst of this, it's not just faithfulness, it's fruitfulness. I can do nothing apart from Him, but with Him, He will do things in my life. Now, let me tell you, it's faithfulness and fruitfulness where God begins to work in your life and begins to infect the people around you.

It doesn't mean that you're going to be Luis Palau down at CityFest with thousands of people flocking to Christ as you preach. It may be that one person looks at God differently because of their encounter with you, because you're the only person that day that said thank you to the barista. It all runs together here.

The Feeling of Being Alone

It's going to require, sometimes, you're going to have this feeling that you're all alone. I love this in verse 14, chapter 19, second part of it. "The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars." This is now Elijah pouring his heart out to God. "I'm the only one left. God, I'm all alone."

Feel like that? See how this down cycles when I start this path? All of a sudden, I'm feeling, I'm the only one. Sometimes, you can be sitting in church and feel like that. "God, there's all of these people here, but I'm the only one that's really serious about this. I'm the only one that really studies. They sit here and they sing and they lift their hands and they sing these songs, but I'm the only real one."

We get unsigned comments at church. I got one the other day. This is perfect. "The services are too long. It should be 45 to 55 minutes. Though I love God, can you cut the BS and just get to the message?" So I assume the BS meant the music, not the message. But sometimes, you're sitting there in church and you're going, "I am the only one that's really worshiping. I'm the only one." Feel like that? All alone, nobody else is following you, God. Here I am, playing by all the rules.

When Playing by the Rules Feels Unfair

I can fall into this myself. Nothing sets me off like a TV ad where a guy says, "I owe the IRS $400,000 and I paid him $1.99." Because I want to go, well, you know who's paying the difference? This schmuck right here is. That's who's paying the difference. And he's standing in front of a 28-bedroom house.

I got to guard myself on that because pretty soon I can start to say, "I'm the only one that's playing by the rules." I get little looks into my heart when I hear that stuff. "I'm playing by the rules. I'm doing what you told me to do. And at the end of the day, it feels like I'm getting screwed and this guy who didn't play by the rules, it's okay, and he comes out on top."

And you can get there really fast if you lose your focus, if you lose that idea of stability and perseverance. So here's what the Lord says to him, verse 15.

The Lord said to him, "Go back the way you came, go off to the desert of Damascus. And when you get there, anoint the king." And He makes all these arrangements that are in place. He says in verse 18, "Yet I reserve 7,000 of Israel who have not bowed their knee to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him." You think you're all alone? Suck it up, Elijah. There's 7,000 others out there like you.

Finding Stability Through Spiritual Consistency

So the character trait that I want to develop is stability. It's firmness of character. It's the capacity to return to equilibrium even when it's displaced. Here's my resolution: I'll become exceptional by finding stability through my spiritual consistency rather than my temporary circumstances.

Every time I take the temporal and make them eternal and take the eternal and make it temporal, every time I screw up. So how many of us—I'll put myself in there—are counting our strength based on temporal things? I'm healthy, therefore... We were doing something the other day, I can't remember what it was. And it was just somebody, they were just moving. And Susan said, "They have no idea what it's like to be healthy."

I resolve that my strength—strength comes not in me, but in my relationship with Him. Not in what I have and not in my accomplishments. We have a tendency to try to find our strength in people, places, and things. Those are called idols.

Identifying Our Idols

So finish this sentence in your mind: "If I lost this, life wouldn't be worth living." Or finish it another way: "If I had this, I'd have meaning and my life would be fulfilled." If I lost this, if I had that—if it's anything other than Jesus, whatever we just did was identify idols in your life.

If I lost this job, if I lost this house, if I lost this relationship, if I lost my kids... I think about it all the time. Brayden and Yale, I'm having so much fun with them and just watching them and getting to know them and seeing their personalities come out. And I was telling Haley, "You and Sarah are essentially the same personality types you were when you were three." She said, "Oh my golly, that is not good news."

But their personalities are out. And Brayden is this very thoughtful, very calculated, very protective, very slow. He's driven by time. "What time is it? What time is it?" So we're in the car the other day. And he said, "What time is it?" I said, "1:36." He said, "I'm supposed to be in bed at 1:30." He's very rule-oriented. I don't believe that came from my side of the family.

Yale, on the other hand, cares about very little other than literally baseball. It's baseball 24-7. You just turn it on and he watches baseball. He's got his own personality. He wants it driven that way.

The Weight of Our Concerns

You know, when I take Susan now, because I'm not letting Susan drive—so she's a little frustrated with me—I'm taking her and we go to the doctor. We go to the doctor in the hospital last Monday. We come down this hall. We turn this way, we go into her oncologist. If we turn this way, it's pediatric oncology.

I think of Brayden, and he's just this special little kid. If I had to take him in there and watch him go through this, that would be really, really, really hard. But even then, I'd have to remind myself, God's sovereign and God's in control. So if you got something in there—if I lost this, life wouldn't be worth living—if it's not Jesus, it's an idol.

Or the other side of the coin: "If I just had this." So you got a whole bunch of people who aren't working. They said, "Oh, if I just had a job, I'd be happy." And I get to remind them, "Remember how unhappy you were at the job you had?" Now, they paid you. That'd be nice. But we always want...

The Peace That Passes Understanding

Listen, ultimately—and I understand how sanctimonious this sounds, and maybe even for some of you, this might even sound like the equivalent of putting things in a balloon and popping them—I'm just telling you, when you're in right relationship with the creator God of the universe, that idea of stability, that idea of firmness of character, that capacity to rebound, it's beyond description. That's why Paul says, He will give you a peace that passes all understanding.

I'm watching—and again, I hope I don't talk about it too much, but it's over—I'm just watching Susan go through this stuff. I don't know where she gets the physical, emotional strength for this. I don't get it. The capacity to still be Nana in the midst of the fact that she's so weak.

Five Keys to Stability

Give you five things real quickly. Accept the responsibility for your own stability. Choose this day who you're going to serve. Now, number two, recognize that life's circumstances fluctuate. There's variables. You're going to have days that seem good and days that seem bad. You're going to have moments that seem good followed by moments that seem bad. The whole day of good would be astonishing to me.

Number three, develop a strong linkage to spiritual situations. I'm understanding that there's spiritual warfare at place, and that this is a spiritual battle, and that there's a battle between—not just good and evil—there's a battle between the creator God of the universe and Satan and his demons, and you're in the middle of this.

Number four is vintage me: Expect bad news on a daily basis. And I just think that's realistic. A couple weeks ago, I had a great day, great morning, great day. I got carried away—great morning. Had a great morning, great, great morning. Getting ready to go to lunch, and I get a call from this guy that says, "So-and-so and so-and-so and I would like to meet with you this afternoon."

I said, "Perfect," hung up. I'm screwed. I said, "I know this, I knew I had a good morning. Knew it couldn't hang over into the afternoon. This can't be good, there's no way. They're not coming to say, 'Oh, you're great. We love to work with you. You're the coolest guy in the world. Can we take a pay cut and work harder?' That ain't happening."

So they come in, sure enough, it's bad. And I said, "Okay, that's about right. That's about the rhythm of the day. That's about life." Expect bad news daily.

And I'm not being pessimistic. I'm just telling you, that's the way it is. I don't care who you are. It might be our age, my age. It might be that consequently we hang out with older people, but I don't know anybody who isn't wrestling with something right now. Their kids, their grandkids, their health, buildings that won't sell, whatever it is.

And that's okay. Here's what that's called. This is really simple. It's called life. It's always been this way. See, even in that, see how pitiful we'll get? We're the only ones. We've never had it like this. No, no generation's ever suffered like this, really.

Aspire to Stability More Than Success

Number five, aspire to stability more than success. We are obviously in a culture that worships success. But stability in the Lord is success.

If you make yourself, again, I'm leaning back on the passage of James we just taught. Friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God. And the word friendship there in Greek is philia. It's the only place in the New Testament that it's translated friendship. Every place else it's translated love. Here's what He's saying. Loving the world makes you an enemy of God.

And when we talk about the world, He's not talking about the planet. He's talking about the values of the world, the systems of the world, success as the world sees it. And He says, if success comes along, that's terrific. If God gives you worldly success, that's terrific. By the way, with that comes just a gigantic burden of responsibility. Because if you've been given much, much is expected.

But to be successful in God's eyes, what does that mean? It means to be a man or woman who's in a vibrant relationship with Him, who's spending time with Him in His word and time with Him in prayer, and who is to the people around them salt and light and extension of God in the midst of this world.

Pick up right there next week. Father, help us see these truths. We pray that You would use us, that people would see something in us. And what they see is really You at work, that we would be stable, firm, not because we're strong, but because You are. God, will You do this work in our life? We ask it in Christ's name, amen.