Live Life Confidently
Tom Shrader addresses the fourth step in spiritual maturity: living life confidently as a child of God. Drawing from Romans 8:28-39, he explains how God's perfect love provides security that enables believers to face life boldly. He systematically addresses seven common fears - death, economic insufficiency, rejection, loneliness, suffering, failure, and insignificance - showing how Christ is the antidote to each one through His unchanging love and faithful provision.
“It's not based on me hanging on to Him, it's based on Him hanging on to me.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2012)
Recorded: October 11, 2012
Duration: 39 min
Themes: confidence, fear, security, identity, boldness, love, provision, trust, struggling with fear, facing uncertainty, new believer, doubting gods love, feeling insecure, worried about future, questioning identity, overwhelmed by circumstances
Scripture: Romans 8:28-39, Philippians 1:6, Romans 5, Matthew 6:25-34, Deuteronomy 31:7, James 1:2, 2 Timothy 4:11, Acts 2:22-24
Theological Themes: assurance of salvation, spiritual maturity, child of god, romans 8, perfect love, biblical identity, sanctification, gods faithfulness
Full Transcript
Today is week four in an 11-week series. We get to a lot of the application part. This lesson today became really important and practical.
Let me tie this together with a little bit of summary, just to make sure we're on the same page. Week one, the Bible is our final authority. Once I understand not just the Bible, I go to week two, it's a lifelong process of learning. So for sure it's the Scripture, and He's an infinite God, finite mind, day by day. He reveals two things now. He reveals more of Himself, which I need, but He opens up me to me, and I see my sinfulness.
Then last week, now we've got the Word of God, we've got thought processes going, now what we're trying to put in place is making good decisions, godly decisions. So often we're faced with these dilemmas, people will come and say, "What do you think I should do?" I will always say, "Well, what do you think you should do?" It's startling how often they know what to do, they just don't want to do it.
Now we get into applying it, but there's one step in the way. I think, in my mind, this becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. Step number four: live life confidently. Not arrogantly, not cocky, but now there's a certain confidence in my life, not because of who I am, but because of who I am in Christ. My identity now is as a child of God. I'm in a new relationship, I'm a new creature.
The Difference Between Believing God and Believing In God
So I made this observation last week, and we didn't camp on it, we will this week: almost everyone believes God, but not everyone believes in God. They believe God, they believe that He exists, there's this higher power, but now it comes to daily life, and we begin to question Him. Let me give a real simple example. Philippians chapter 1, verse 6: "He who began a good work in you will continue it till the day of Christ Jesus." It tells us that it was God who began this work.
So I had this lady who came to my office one day, years ago, and she gave me a copy of a page of a book. At the time I was teaching about salvation, and I was making the point that salvation is from God, it's not from man, that it's not based on works, it's based on Christ, who He is, and what He did.
Here's the quote: "Please note, salvation is God-given, God-driven, God-empowered, God-originated. The gift is not from man to God, but from God to man. Grace is created by God and given to man. On the basis of this point alone, Christianity is set apart from any other religion in the world. Every other approach to God is a bartering system: if I do this, God will do that. I'm either saved by works, what I do, by emotions, what I experience, or by knowledge, by what I know. By contrast, Christianity has no whiff of negotiation. Man is not the negotiator. Indeed, man has no grounds from which to negotiate. Salvation, and let me repeat it, is God-given, God-driven, God-empowered, God-originated."
The Bible teaches in Romans chapter 5 that while we were yet sinners, while we were enemies of God, while we were in that condition, Christ died for us. Paul is on the way to Damascus to destroy the church. He wasn't searching God, he was convinced he already had God. He thought he was one of God's favorite guys. You're moving along, you hate God, and then there's this moment in time where God, in spite of you, not because of you—He didn't look at you and say, "Boy, there's something winsome about her, if I could just get him on my team, he could really be a key player." No, in spite of you, He rips out your heart of stone, puts in a heart of flesh. He originates it, He's the one who continues it.
God's Amazing Achievement
A week later she came in and she gave me another quote: "What a God. Ponder the achievement of God. He doesn't condone our sin, nor does He compromise His standards. He doesn't ignore our rebellion, nor does He relax His demands. Rather than dismiss our sin, He assumes our sin and incredibly sentences Himself. God's holiness is honored, our sin is punished, and we are redeemed. God does what we cannot do, so we can be what we dare not dream: perfect before God."
So then the next week she came in with another one of these quotes. I said, "Where are you getting these?" And she said, "They're from a book called 'The Glory of Christmas,' which is a compilation of writings from John Piper, Max Lucado, John MacArthur, and maybe a couple others." I said, "Well, rather than piecemeal me this, why don't you give me the book? That would be the better way to do it, that makes more sense." And she said, "Well, it's out of print, I only have one copy, and I'm not sure you're book worthy." So I never got the book.
Then I found a couple of copies on eBay. I was looking for them the other day, I can't find them, so I don't know, it may be back in print, but it was a wonderful little book that you could almost use as a devotional. So it's called "The Glory of Christmas"—you might explore that and just take a look at that.
Our Identity in Christ
Out of this comes this identity of who we are. Open your Bibles to Romans chapter 8, it's a classic passage, one that we go back to over and over again. We're going to look beginning at verse 28, where Paul writes, "And we know." So if you have your Bibles that you work through, study, underline, put a box around, circle around the idea of "and we know." This is a fact—becomes very important.
Romans 8:28: "And we know God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God and to those who are called according to His purpose."
That's a wonderful verse. We've made the point before, if we had a Bible that only had one verse in it and it was this, from this we conclude that God's all-knowing and all-powerful. He'd have to be in order to take everything and cause it to work together for good. Now it's not a universal promise. He doesn't say this is great, so you're here today, let's say, and you're a visitor, maybe you've been around for a long time...
But you enjoy parts of it, but you don't buy the thing. You don't buy Jesus as the only way, you don't buy Him as Lord and Savior. Don't make Romans 8:28 a promise for you—it's not. It's for those who love God and those that are called according to His purpose.
And then he goes on and begins to unpack this now. We're talking about the confidence we have. For those who He foreknew—and that term is not that He knew about them, there was an intimacy there before the foundations of the earth. He chose them, He brought them into right relationship with Him. Those He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son so that they would be the firstborn among many brethren.
And those who He predestined He called, and this is not the universal call, this is an effectual call. He moves them, none are lost here, and all of those that He called He justified. All He justified He glorified. Remember? He who began the good work will continue it to the day of Christ Jesus. He's the one who initiates and sustains this relationship.
Living with Divine Confidence
What's the practical application of that? Verse 31: "What should we say? If God's for us, who can be against us?" It doesn't mean that there isn't suffering, hardship, attack, all those things—wear and tear of life, spiritual warfare. It comes, but greater is He that's in you than He that's in the world. If God is for us, who can be against us?
Verse 35: "What will separate us from"—and here's the key phrase—"the love of Christ"—not our love for Him but His love for us. And then he begins to list these things that were very real to them, to us: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword.
Verse 37: "In all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, life, angels, principalities, things present, things to come, powers, height, depth, or any other created things"—there's the catch all. He lists these things and then he says anything in creation. So that's anything other than God, nothing. You can put your name in there. You will not be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
God's love for you is so perfect. God's love for you is so deep and He manifests it, He shows it. The practical application is you can live life boldly because—this was encouraging to me—it's not based on me hanging on to Him, it's based on Him hanging on to me.
The Accessibility of Biblical Truth Today
So let me apply the practical side of this and this stems from years ago, driving along, listening to someone teaching on the radio. I was explaining to somebody the other day, younger, you know, one of our young pastoral staff guys, 25, 26 years old, and I was saying it's so different now than it was 30 years ago when God saved me. You might get a little Christian radio with J. Bernie McGee on it, but other than that if you were lucky you could get a cassette tape, but it cost you 50 bucks to get this series, and then you had to be around, you had to have it in your car or something.
Where now you have the ability really just to pick this phone up and punch in a few things, and you're online, and everything that Ray Steadman taught is at your fingertips. I have a box at home—Sandy found it the other day, she's in the process of continually moving things around—and she found this box. I would say it's maybe about the size of my briefcase, a little bit smaller than that, and in it is every cassette or CD or lesson that Larry Wright did. It was a gift that they gave me, Abundant Life gave me years ago.
It's cool, and it's great, and I use it, but if I don't use it anymore, I just go here and click, click, click, and everything that's in there is now on here.
Christ's Most Frequent Command
I'm driving along, I'm listening to the radio, and I can't even remember who was teaching. For those of you that have been around now, you're going to go, "I know the answer," but he was talking about Jesus and His teaching and us and His understanding of us. He said the most frequent prohibition that Jesus gives us, recorded in the New Testament, is "do not be afraid." It's interesting, because we think about all this, like Jesus says do or don't do, and we rarely get that one into the mix, yet it's two or three times more frequent than any other prohibition.
Do not be afraid. I remember making a note mentally, getting to a red light and writing it down, because my mental notes don't work so well, and going, "Unpack this."
So here's my conclusion. Why did Jesus say that? Two reasons I came up with. Number one, because He knows us. So take money, for example. We're worried we don't have it, then we get it, and we're worried we'll lose it. He understands us. He created us. He knows we are kind of inherently afraid, that we're always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Living in a Fear-Driven World
The second thing is, we live in a very scary world. So we flinch toward fear itself. Watch the promos, especially for like the nightly news, but it's magazines, it's everything. It's always appealing on fear.
I'm watching the other night, and I don't know what show I was, I might have been the Mentalist, and they were doing a promo for the nightly news, and it was "the germs on the lunchbox of your kids as you send them to school, and what it means, and the proliferation of it." And it was all germs. They had a kid on there that—a kid bet him a dollar and dared him to lick a handrail in Union Station. It sounds really gross, it was.
And this doctor was talking about the germs on the handrail, and saying by far, there are a fraction of germs on a toilet seat at JFK than there was on a handrail. Well, I don't need to know any of this stuff, but now he's relating it to the lunch pail of the kids, and all that goes on, and the fear, and what you have to do is you send Johnny off to school.
So here you go. We flinch toward fear, and then it's a scary world. Live life boldly. I came up with seven categories. You can expand this list, shrink it if
The Antidote to Death's Agony
In this amazing sermon that Peter preached and recorded in Acts chapter two, we tend to focus more on the result—3,000 people are saved. But in it, he speaks to Jews about the predetermined plan of God in verse 22, and verse 24 says that God raised Jesus up again, putting an end to the agony of death. It's impossible for Him to be held in His power. Jesus' resurrection puts an end to the agony of death.
We have to explain that this doesn't necessarily mean physical agony at all. I just read that there are approximately ten times more Christians martyred now than there were at the time of Nero. I just read an article about Sudan where, and this is gross to me, one of the ways they're martyring Christians is literally to skin them. I had a paper cut last week and didn't feel I could drive myself to the emergency room. I don't know how I'd handle this.
But He's not talking about physical agony. The girls and I were just talking about it the other day, watching even as Susan died—the physical anguish of it, the pain of it, the agony of it. It's not that. It's the uncertainty of what happens after death—that agony.
A Construction Worker's Confidence
There was a guy in our church, an old guy, gruff guy, construction guy, very successful heating and air conditioning contractor who came out from the Midwest and started from nothing. All that stereotypical stuff. There was a song we used to sing called "Let the Walls Fall Down." It would drive him nuts that we would sing that song during a construction project, during a building time. I said, "Well, it wasn't really literal walls, it's walls between us."
He told me one day, "I hate standing in line, I hate waiting, and every Sunday to get in here, I'm stuck in the traffic out there. But I love it." He would say, "There's all these things. I don't like the music. I don't like necessarily the way you dress. I don't like a bunch of things. But I love the results of it." He was spiritually mature enough to say, "I want to be in the middle of this because my kids are here, my grandkids are here." He was able to embrace it because it was important to him.
Now he's getting sick and he's ready to die. He's out at Mayo and I go see him and we have this incredible visit. I leave and they call and say, "Listen, the doctor was just in and told him—I don't know how they can do this—'Here's what's going to happen. You're going to go to sleep and the next time you go to sleep, you're not going to wake up.'" They said, "In that context, you might want to come back and visit."
The Most Radiant Smile
So I go back and I'm telling you, I've never seen—I've been around a bunch of dying people and all the stuff that goes with it—but I've never seen a more radiant smile, not a bride on her special day. When they told him that, it lit him up. I said to him, "Are you afraid?" He said, "No, I'm going to miss my wife and my grandkids, but I'm not afraid at all."
It's not that he conned himself. He knew the truth of God's word and he knew to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord. There was no agony in that. He welcomed that. So I called the next morning and he had stayed up all night and then about this time in the morning, he drifted off to sleep and he never woke up. I don't know how they know that.
Don't be afraid of death. The dying process I get—I don't know how that's going to unfold—but death itself, there's no agony there. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. You haven't just conned yourself into that. It's what the Bible says. It's the promise He makes us. If you believe in Christ, you're as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there.
Economic Insufficiencies
Number two, and I write it this way: economic insufficiencies. I don't know about losing everything. I used to say that I don't think any of us are going to worry about losing everything, but maybe the economy has changed that. I don't mean it in a flip way.
Sandy and I were in Flagstaff after a conference, and we were going to Zip's for breakfast. There was a lady walking up who looked slightly disoriented, but I'm sure she looked at me and said, "He looks totally disoriented." So I don't even know the distinction. We let her in. She didn't acknowledge us. It was a sparse crowd. There was a table way over in one corner, table in the other. We went to one corner. She went to the other.
A gal came and took her order and it was ice cream. It was like ten in the morning. She wanted some ice cream. Then she just started talking: "I was just in New York City and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I said to Sandy, "She probably owns half of Flagstaff, probably owns a restaurant."
When Success Turns Upside Down
But that launched into a discussion of Sandy talking about transitional housing, dealing with people who are homeless, talking about how often they were people who've been pretty successful and then there was an event and it just turned their life upside down. So it could be that. But for most of us, I think it's not losing it all. It's just not having all we think we need. And it can be consumptive.
Matthew chapter six, Jesus is delivering what's called the Sermon on the Mount. In verses 25 to 34, the heading I have in my Bible is "The Cure for Anxiety." Jesus said, "For this reason, I say to you, don't
Do not worry about your life, what you're going to eat, what you're going to drink, nor your body, what you're going to put on. Then He begins to just illustrate it. Here's His summation in verse 31: "Do not worry then, saying, what do we eat, what do we drink, what do we wear for clothing? For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things."
He said when all of a sudden you are worried—and that's not talking about legitimate concern. He's not asking you to just cut off all emotions. I get it. We deal with people all the time who are saying, "I've lost my job. We've gone through our savings. We've exhausted everything." I get that. But what He's talking about is in the normal course of life, where the focus is on all of these things: food, shelter, clothing. It's the first thing you think about in the morning. It's the last thing you think about at night. He said you're thinking just like a guy who doesn't know Christ.
Here's why I say don't worry. The second part of verse 32: "Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things." God knows. God's your Father. God's the provider. He's the one who gives. Now again, our problem is He may have a different standard for our life than we have. But He knows you're not somehow beyond His reach or off His radar. "Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."
Verse 34: Here's the screensaver: "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." You don't have to import yesterday's problems to today or take the future and bring them into today.
God's Provision Through Our Effort
Economic insufficiency—God knows. God's going to provide. How does He do this? Well, He does it in a variety of ways, but it seems to be a combination of our effort and God's blessing.
We had a guy came in one Thursday morning. He did not look good. I said, "Man, you don't look good." He said, "Well, I lost my job. I'm worried about it. Wife's worried about it." I said, "Okay, well, if there's anything I can do to help you, let me know. There's a phone call or something you think I can make that's beneficial—more than willing to do it."
Saw him a week later. I said, "How's it going?" He said, "You know, hard. Don't have a job yet." I saw him after about three weeks. I said, "How is this?" He said, "You know, it's okay." I said, "Well, tell me what it's like." He said, "Well, I just pretty much stay home all day, and I'm trusting God to provide me a job." I said, "Well, I'm trusting God to provide too, but in a more traditional way—like resumes and interviews and pounding the pavement."
He's not saying here don't do anything. Work. Do what you can. But ultimately, it's God who's responsible for this—trusting in Him, believing in Him. He says, "Listen, I'm going to take care of it." I don't know how. If He gave me all the hows, it wouldn't require any faith.
Another thing that I'll tell you that hacks me off about the way He does it: He says, "I'll give you your daily bread." He doesn't say, "I'm going to give you your annual bread or your life bread." If He gave me everything I needed for the rest of my life right now, I'd blow it this afternoon. Or if I didn't—if I was judicious about it and saved, maybe hoarded—if I saved it, I'd never have to go back to Him again. Our natural human tendency is to love the gift and ignore the gift giver, to be absolutely swept away in the blessing and not the blesser. So He says, "Don't be afraid. You don't have to worry about this. Why? I'm going to take care of it."
Rejection and Loneliness
Number three, and I'm going to tie three and four together: three is rejection, and it seems to me like the other side of that is four, which is loneliness. Rejection—so there's this idea or fear that I'm going to have a person who is somehow not like me, won't like me, or somehow be disappointed in me. I can take all that pressure off. That's what it means in a way to be human: that you're going to have people who reject you. You're going to have these people who don't necessarily like you.
Let me pull up under loneliness the same idea. Deuteronomy chapter 31: Moses is speaking to Joshua, verse 7. He says, "Be strong and be courageous. The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you. He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed." That idea of being dismayed is that idea of being shattered or broken.
A Story About Peer Pressure
Years ago I get a call. My kids went to Grace Community Christian School, and it was from a principal or someone on the staff. They said, "We want you to speak to the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders." I said, "This is just not a good idea. I don't do well with them. I don't have anything to say to them." They said, "No, we want you to do it." I said, "I don't think so." They said, "We need you to do it." So I said, "Okay."
It was like two or three months away, and inside you're going, "I'll probably die in a car wreck before then so I won't have to do it." So the night before, I've got nothing, and the phone rings. It's one of the parents saying, "I heard you're going to speak tomorrow at the junior high school, junior high assembly." I said, "That's true." "So what are you going to speak on?" I said, "I don't know. I'm trusting God," you know, it's that kind of a deal. They said, "I think you should talk about peer pressure." I said, "All right, perfect."
So I went in. I told the students that story, and I said, "I want to talk to you about peer pressure. I want to talk to you about the peer pressure your parents are under, because this never goes away." Right now it's to have the right shoes where you are in school, or have your hair the right way, or to get the right present at Christmas, or to have the right bicycle, or to be on the right sport, or whatever those things are. But now we grow up, and it's to go to the right college, and it's to live in the right neighborhood. It's to have the right address. It's to have the right job. And it never goes away. The thing about the American dream or the concept of stuff and value—
Finding True Acceptance
In them is there's never a finish line in that, there's never enough. The minute I think I've arrived, God allows me to see somebody bigger, better, smarter, faster. It's one thing to be an all-state athlete at an eight-man football school, it's another thing to be playing in the SEC and now it's a very different game. You were the equivalent of a Heisman Trophy winner in this little school in Nebraska or Iowa, Minnesota and now they go, "Hey, you know, we need that jacket for one of the other kids, can you take it off?"
Now it's that equivalent, now you begin to see that and it never goes away and all of a sudden this is really big. Here is Moses saying, "God's ahead of you, behind you, He'll never leave you, forsake you, don't be broken, don't be dismayed." In every human relationship there is varying levels of, "I'll love you if," "I'll accept you if."
I knew, though he was incapable of saying it, I knew my dad loved me. It felt like he loved me more when I was 2 for 3 than when I was 0 for 4. It felt like that. He didn't say it, maybe that was it and now you come into all relationships in this.
I am really confident Sandy loves me, but when all this stuff hit and the physical stuff and now I can't do what hopefully I had at least planned on doing, there was something inside me that says, "Well, this will be a test." I've given you the best nine weeks of my life, you know, that kind of mentality.
But I come to God and there's going to be a loneliness, there will be an isolation. You know, I get in the debate, I mean, there's just no question that the president just stunk. I mean, he yesterday, I was too polite. He said, "I'll go to the altitude," all the explanation. It doesn't matter, but there's this idea, "They love me, but now I screw up a debate, do they love me?" It's just, it doesn't matter who you are, this never stops. We crave for acceptance and the only place I'm going to find it unconditionally is in Christ. Come just as you are, don't stay there, but come just as you are. You're never going to have God saying, "If I knew that about you, you bum."
The Challenge of Changed Relationships
Now let me give you some encouragement, especially those of you who came to Christ as adults. I became a Christian when I was 30, and all sorts of examples. But I had one guy in particular, he said, "You know, I'm very disappointed, because you used to be 31 flavors. We could bring you a sin, you could twist it, make it even better, and now you're vanilla."
I watched some of my friends pull away from me, and I used to think—it took a little bit of thought, a little bit of advice from Larry, a little bit of experience, because I thought, "Well, they don't like me." Uh-uh, they liked me, we proved that. Here's what they don't like: they don't like the Christ they see in you. Now don't you be obnoxious, and mix this up, and they go, "I don't like you, because you're a jerk." You don't have to be obnoxious, you just begin to live this.
In a really subtle way, I told one of the guys at the university, they've got all these college students, I said, "If I were you, I would do a lesson to these kids on the challenge of going home for Christmas or Thanksgiving, especially ones that are freshmen." Because that awkward time, "I'm not really your kid, I don't really want to live here, I'm a grown-up," and then I'm under these rules, and I want all this acceptance, I want all this. But the only perfect place I find it is in Christ.
So He says, "Don't be afraid."
Don't Be Afraid of Suffering
Let me give you a couple more. Here you go: suffering. Don't be afraid of suffering. "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials" (James 1:2). I'm not going to spend any more time on this. We're going to take an entire session on suffering, the human condition, and acknowledge that our flinch is to kind of push it away rather than to embrace it.
So this whole idea of suffering—don't be afraid. He's not going to allow you to be tested beyond that which you can endure. He's not saying suffering won't come. He's just saying that He's going to climb in there with you. He doesn't necessarily remove it.
Don't Be Afraid of Failure
Two more things: failure. Don't be afraid of failure. Second Timothy, at the very end of this book—it's the last book that we have chronologically of Paul writing. He knows he's about to die. He writes, "Make every effort to come to me soon. Demas having loved this present world has deserted me. Only Luke is with me. Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful for service."
Now this is the Mark that Paul took on his first missionary journey. Remember Paul and Barnabas are going out and this young man Mark joins them. He blows out of this trip early on. We don't exactly know why, we just know that he did. It's time for the second journey and Barnabas says, "Paul I think we should take Mark" and Paul says, "I'm not going to take Mark. I don't have time, this is hard work. He's proven, we've seen it."
You can almost create the discussion. Barnabas is going, "Paul is a young man, he's a young man." Here's what we know: every young guy is filled with pride, every old man's filled with regrets. We know those two things. "He's a prideful young arrogant guy. He thought he was ready, he wasn't. I think he is, I'll take care of him." And Paul said, "No, I can't afford this." These two giants separate over this.
At the end of his life Paul comes back—let me read it again—and says, "Only Luke is with me. Pick up Mark, same guy, bring him with you, for he's useful for service."
Don't be afraid of failure. Failure is not fatal. It's how I respond to it. So here you go: I'll give you two guys who blew it big time and essentially the same really. Peter, Judas, both denied Christ in their own ways, both were confronted to it. Judas moved to despair, Peter moved to repentance.
I'm doing a lot of reflection the last couple of months and I see a lot more failures than I do successes. I don't even know what that means—a lot more times where I blew it. Not functioning more on that and that's just part of it.
life, there's something in me that is drawn to a person who's blown it but genuinely repents. I'm watching an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger the other day and I don't want to get into the legitimacy of it. All he could do was say, "I really screwed this up." Now he didn't talk about sin, he talked about a mistake and he seemed in almost a way to be slightly dismissive. I can't judge his heart—oh, it sounds like I just did—but I was struck by the fact that there's nothing you can say or do at this moment. All you can do is say, "I really blew it." The proof is going to be in how you respond to it.
Here's a commodity that we all trade on in every relationship and it's trust. When Tom Peters was looking at this around the year 2000, he said technology and technique are important, but the commodity for the next decade is trust. The minute that's gone, you're in real deep problem. You can't function.
The Trust Crisis
Here you go—we don't trust anybody, and the election really puts a light on this. Last week the unemployment statistics came out. The first thing they do on the Republican side is say we can't trust these numbers. So now we can't trust the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can't trust anything, you can't trust anybody. Tell me how you're going to hold this together.
If you're a husband and wife and you don't trust the other person, that trust is broken. That relationship is very fragile and can endure the hardship that comes. Now here you go—not only are you going to fail, you will fail, but it's how I respond to that.
Learning from Failure: A Story About Haley
My daughter Haley—I always call her the Gia kid. You just add water and she could raise herself. She's easy. I was telling Tyler the other day, I've known Haley all her life, and I've never seen her down. I've never seen her have a bad day. The closest I've seen her to real difficulty was in, I think it was seventh grade.
Sarah, the older one—everything was easy for Sarah. Sarah goes out for student council, she wins. Haley goes out, she doesn't. Sarah goes out for volleyball, she makes it. Haley doesn't make it, but it doesn't matter. At our house, cheer was king.
So it was a Friday, and in the old days, you used to have cheerleading tryouts on Friday, then they'd announce the team on Monday. That's cruel and unusual punishment right there. This was the first year they were going to announce the team as you tried out. So I'm there, I'm on the way to the airport. Haley, Sarah, and Susan are taking me to the airport. I'm going somewhere to speak and Haley comes out. Not throwing stuff, not pouting—you've seen the pouting—not that, just genuine pain. She's right behind me, I'm in the driver's seat, and I can move my side mirror and see her face. Her face is just so sad.
So I go—I don't want to go, but I've got to go—and I call. Susan says, "She's just hurting so much." The pain of how difficult that was.
The Second Chance
About six months later, I'm at my desk and Haley came in and said, "Dad, can you sign this?" I said, "Sure, what is it?" She goes, "Well, it's a release form so I can try out for cheerleading." I said, "Haley, I'm not over the last one. I can't go through this." We have this discussion and she said, "Dad, this doesn't sound like you." She said—here were her words—"I can't make the team if I don't go out. I understand how hard that was. I've tried to do better in this. I've tried to learn from that."
I know it's a silly and simple illustration, but failure is not fatal. It's certainly not fatal before God because you can't make Him love you more, you can't cause Him to love you less.
By the way, here's what I've learned over the years when I tell that story. When I'm done, all the women want to come up and want to know if she made the team the second time. All the women are going, "Okay, we got to get up there. I got to get to work, hurry up because I want to..." Yes, she did the second time. So that was the good thing. I learned that over the years.
Grace in Failure
But when I come to God, I'm going to go, "I blew it." He's going, "Yeah, you did. That's sin, but Christ died for that. So let's go." It's not to be cavalier, but it's to say it's not fatal. Even in my sin, I can live boldly, confidently because it's not about me and my strength—it's about Him.
The Fear of Being Insignificant
Here's the last one and probably deserves more attention than it's going to get because we're out of time. It's the fear of being insignificant. That at your funeral, the guys will be over in the corner and they're going, "Boy, we really miss him. We need a fourth. Do you know anyone?"
I've done a lot of funerals over the years. I love doing funerals, but I was doing a funeral for a guy I didn't know. I do this thing where I say, "I don't know Bob. You know Bob. Tell us about Bob." It was like, "Bob was a heck of a chef. Bob started this dinner club. Bob..." I love those because they put everything in perspective. I'm going, "Okay, at the end of my life, what do I want Him to say? Tom was a heck of a chef?"
Now I'm not saying that isn't good and I'm not saying don't knock yourself out and do those things. I'm just saying, is that what's truly significant? I don't want to just drift away. I know this is going to happen and the world will go, "Yeah, whatever." Three, four years into it, my kids will care. My grandkids will kind of forget. No one else cares. How do I ensure significance?
True Significance
In its easiest way, it's this: What are the things God cares about? His Word, His people, and lost people. If my life's engaged in those, I'll be significant in His kingdom, wherever it takes me—art, science, politics. His Word, His people, and lost people.
So this is big thing about politics and Christian and politics and all this. We need some of you to be running, and forget the president's thing—I mean, whatever. We need some of you to be running for school board, city council, and turn this not into a theocracy, but into a better place to live.
So here you go: do not be afraid, live life boldly. Why? Because you're so strong? No, but because He is. So here are these seven things, and you could add to them a hundred and seven things, and Jesus is the antidote in all of those situations.
Now we got to make this real. Now I'm in this world, I have that word, I have that challenge. Now how do I flesh that out? I offer the challenge: the better the church, the bigger the challenge. The more Bible you know, the tougher it is. There's something almost addictive about it—I want to know, I want to learn, I need to spend more time with Him. Yes, you do, so that your life is transformed.
Otherwise it's just I take this in and it never has an outlet. It ought to affect the citizen I am, the way I vote, the type of mom I am, dad, person I am. So we'll start on that next week.
Prayer
Father, thank you for those amazing truths. Drive them into our heart. Let us see that this life is about You and Your provision to us. God, make us obedient followers of Yours. We ask it in Christ's name, amen.