Getting Control Over Your Career
Tom Shrader concludes a four-week series on gaining control of life by examining career and work through the lens of Ecclesiastes. He explores how Solomon's pursuit of wealth, achievement, and success ultimately led to frustration when viewed 'under the sun' - from a purely human perspective. The teaching emphasizes finding contentment and seeing work through God's perspective rather than seeking satisfaction in accomplishments alone.
“You live in a body that by its nature is discontent, and you live in a world, especially in our culture, that's designed to make you discontent.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Getting Control (2016)
Recorded: 2016
Duration: 39 min
Themes: work, purpose, contentment, discipline, control, satisfaction, achievement, wisdom, career dissatisfaction, workplace burnout, professional, employee, business owner, midlife transition, seeking purpose, retirement planning
Scripture: Proverbs 25:28, Ecclesiastes 2:22, Ecclesiastes 4:4, Ecclesiastes 4:7-8, Ecclesiastes 9:10, Ecclesiastes 5, Ecclesiastes 9:11, Ecclesiastes 6:16
Theological Themes: ecclesiastes, vanity, stewardship, calling, providence, god's sovereignty, worldly perspective, eternal perspective
Full Transcript
We are in week four, which is the final week of a four-week series titled Getting Control of Your Life. Today is the culmination and summary all tied together. We talked about getting control of finances, we talked about getting control of time, getting control of appetites, which was anything that leads us astray. You have the worksheet in front of you today: Getting Control of Career.
Now for some of you, that's an immediate checkout. You're thinking, "Been down that road, I'm done, I don't need career stuff." Career is the basis of this, but it's far broader than that. It's really an examination of life. My personal experience is that as I check those things off—career, I'm not in that phase—I found that the same pressures existed because the tendency was to waste time, waste energy, become a little less focused and directed. So these principles, and that's really what they are, become even more important.
On your sheet, you'll see the theme verse for the series, Proverbs 25:28: "Like a city whose walls are broken down, is a man, woman, boy, girl who lacks self-control."
The Power of Discipline
I was talking yesterday with somebody about Sandy, and he had met her. He was saying, "You know, she's pretty amazing." I said, "She is amazing." He said, "What do you think is the key there?" I simply said, "She's very smart, very focused, but she's very disciplined. She makes lists. I can't make a list."
Last night I'm talking to her, and she said, "Now what are your goals for tomorrow?" I said, "Are you serious? I mean, seriously, honestly, I want to get to Circle K by 5:50—that's my goal." I missed that. I got there at 5:55, so I'm already out of whack, and I barely left the house. It's not just making that list, it's getting it done. I stand in awe of that, and it really has inspired me.
I spent an hour on hold yesterday with Medicare. Then I got the gal, and she said, "Hi, this is Victoria, could I help you?" I said, "Victoria, are you having a good day?" "Yes, I am. Are you?" I said, "Not really. I've been on hold for an hour." She said, "You know what, let's get this fixed." It was really cool. I got a bunch of stuff done yesterday. It's really simple. We're not talking about climbing Mount Everest here, or curing cancer. We're talking about living a productive life on whatever those terms are.
Five Signs You're Out of Control
So you got the outline: how do you know you're out of control, what do you need to know, and what do you need to do? How do you know you're out of control?
Number one: You no longer enjoy the work you perform. We have to be careful here. I was in a meeting, a small group gathering of about seven or eight guys. This was probably 10 or 15 years ago. We're downtown in a boardroom at one of the high-rises, so there are five or six highly productive, high-energy guys, and me. I don't think I fit into that group.
We're going around analyzing life, and they're all complaining. We get to one guy, and he said, "This job—I mean, they're calling me all the time. I got to get up in the middle of the night. There's a lot of pressure." I said, "You're a doctor. In the entire time in med school, you didn't know this is what..." What we discovered when we peeled this back, much to my amusement (and they didn't seem as impacted as I did), is they all basically had jobs that they dreamed about, but the dog caught the car. So I have to realign.
Secondly: You no longer control the lifestyle you maintain. You're being pulled in different ways, by different people, different settings.
Third: You no longer look forward to a promotion. I had a guy come in, and I said, "How you doing?" "Good." "Anything new at work?" He said, "I'm up for a big promotion. There are about a hundred of us applying for this job." I said, "Well, that's cool. Do you have a chance?" He said, "I'm by far the most qualified. I think I'll get it." I said, "That's terrific." He said, "I don't want this. It's less money, more responsibility, more of this, and it puts me on a track where they're going to want to move me. They're going to want to send me to Dayton. I don't want to go to Dayton." I said, "Well, why don't you intervene?" "Well, I don't know. If I don't take this, I'm afraid all of a sudden I'm the one who's labeled." See all those things combined?
Here's the fourth thing: You no longer appreciate the life you lead. Your hero is Richard Kimball. You want to dye your hair and run around the country looking for a one-armed guy, hoping nobody knows who you are. There's no gratitude at all. You don't see it. You don't appreciate the things that are going on. We'll talk about it more in a minute.
The Search for Contentment
Number five, and this is my wheelhouse: You no longer feel contentment. No one has influenced my life more than Larry Wright. When I started to teach, I spent a lot of time with Larry. I'd ask Him certain things, and I watched everything, and I heard Larry teach Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Live, where I could see, not just tape—I listened to tape all the time—but I watched Him live three times a week, and I watched everything.
I said to Him one day, "I'm convinced that I could take any tape"—and He probably had taught through most of the books of the Bible, if not all of them—"I could take any tape, somewhat obscure, Ezekiel chapter 3, and your teaching on it, in the 45 minutes, you would talk about marriage." He said, "Well, I don't know if that's true." I said, "Well, I'm pretty sure it is. If it's not 100%, it's 90%." He said, "That's just my thing. That's how God touched me. God took my marriage and put it together."
and I come back to that on everything. He said, "You'll develop that too. It'll be your thing."
Well, it didn't take long for me, and probably given my background, it probably reflects my selfishness and my sin, that my hot button became contentment. Godliness plus contentment is great gain. Came into the world with nothing, we leave with nothing. It was the theme over and over again.
Now, it's a sticky wicket when you get into it, because the minute you start talking about contentment, people are afraid you're going to get soft. I had a guy that wanted me to come in and talk to his sales force about a variety of different things. He said, "Here's my real hesitancy. You're going to start talking about love and all this stuff, and they're going to lose their edge. They're going to lose that thing that moves them."
The Power of Love in Competition
I said, "Well, I don't know if that's true or not." We were a week ago Saturday, I think, in Tucson with a group of 70 high school coaches, and I was suggesting that the number one quality they needed to develop on their teams. I'm suggesting that if you can build an attitude, an environment of love on that team, selflessness, real selflessness, that's the very essence of a team sport.
So Deshaun Watson, when he was talking about Clemson this year, said, "We love one another, we care for one another." Well, you bring that spirit into a team, you begin to build cohesion. It's the same thing with a staff. It's any relationship.
The first thing those coaches do is they step back and say, "We're going to get soft. We start loving each other, we may not win." And so then I come back, and you know the answer, right? First two guys I heard talk about love on a team were John Wooden and Vince Lombardi. I don't think Lombardi and soft—it's a real care. It's that real cohesion.
Living in a Culture of Discontentment
Well, it's that sense of contentment. It's satisfaction. You live in a body that by its nature is discontent, and you live in a world, especially in our culture, that's designed to make you discontent. You never have the right corn chip, you never have the right cheeseburger, you never have the right car, you never have the right house, you never have the right spouse. You can always do better.
In this whole process of being out of control, and as I said, it's way beyond career, I begin to look at these things in my life. Well, what do I need to know? And as you look at those, you'll see the references are alongside of them, and they're all out of the book of Ecclesiastes. As I was talking to Sandy, I was saying, it's really interesting, this whole study really came out of the book of Ecclesiastes.
Solomon's Unique Perspective on Life
It's where Solomon says, "Here's what life's all about." The story is basically this. God allowed Solomon to experience everything you think would make you happy. And then he steps back and says, "Here's how that went."
So if you love to write, you're an author. He's very successful in what he writes. He's a musician. He writes songs. Wealth, really unparalleled wealth. The finest of wines. Women. He either had 700 wives and 300 concubines, or 700 concubines and 300 wives. Whatever it was, I call it the original 700 Club, is what he had.
And this is not to be gross. It's to have you understand this. He basically could see three women every day throughout the year and never see the same one twice. And these ladies existed for one reason, and that was to satisfy him. So he has a very unique perspective on life. He steps back at the end of this, and he writes kind of a memoir. And so we learn from it.
What Work Can Become
What do you need to know? Number one, work can become obnoxious. It can ruin your days. Proverbs 2:22, "What does a man get for all his toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his work is pain and grief."
Now if you're going to understand, or we're going to understand the book of Ecclesiastes, we need to understand the phrase "under the sun." What Solomon does is to say, I'm going to look at the human condition from two perspectives. One is strictly human. It's going to be horizontal. It's as I look around as a person evaluating life. The other is try to see the world as God sees it. He says, under the sun, in this evaluation, I really never get to a finish line. It ruins my days.
Here's your second point. And it can ruin your nights. Solomon says, even at night, his mind doesn't rest. This too is meaningless. If you're somewhat familiar with the book of Ecclesiastes, you know the phrase, "vanity of vanities." He's not saying vain in a personal sense. The word literally is the idea of futility. That life, lived on this horizontal plane, is ultimately futile. That there's no rest in the mind.
The Mental Rehearsal and Debrief Cycle
I talk to myself a lot. I presume people do. I used to kind of hide it, and now I just assume everybody thinks I'm on a speaker phone. I just talk to myself a lot.
I was driving yesterday, and I was listening to some television commentary on the political scene, and I was providing my own commentary, very animated way. How I see this. This is what I see. How can you not see this? This is the problem. And I'm really going at it.
What I realize is that in the morning, I'm rehearsing the day, and at the night, I'm debriefing the day. I've got a couple of meetings today, so as I'm driving up today, and I'm preparing, I'm warming up, how's that phrase sound? Can I remember that phrase? Get that in the meeting.
And then tonight, Sandy will call, and she'll say, "How was your day?" And I'll say, "Fine." And she'll go, "Fine is not a descriptor." "It was good." "Oh, well, what happened? Who did you meet? What did they say? What did you say?" I'll go, "Oh, no, no, more important, how was your flight?" You know, and then that'll be the debrief for the day.
Here's what he's saying, is in this world, as I look at work, in fact, the phrase he uses, is I look at my toil and anxious striving. I had dinner the other night with a man who I admire a great deal. He's 80. And I said, "Are you kind of at that point
Misguided Motivations in Career Success
I heard an older, very successful businessman speaking to a group where young people were asking him about life and career success. He said, "Here's my message to them," and I thought I needed to write this down. He said, "Stop striving." How do they respond to that? How do you take a 30-year-old man or woman who's at the front end of their career and say, "Stop striving?"
Solomon understood that when it comes to work, motivation can become excessive. We have to be careful here. You can push to surpass in unhealthy ways. Ecclesiastes 4:4 says, "I saw that all labor and achievement springs from man's envy of his neighbor. This is meaningless." He didn't see this great drive to succeed or create something beautiful, but saw that in their hearts what was driving them was envy and jealousy.
The Drive to Impress Others
When I was growing up, I was a boxing fan, primarily because of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard. There were other amazing fighters like Marvin Hagler and Tommy Hearns. One of the most underrated boxers was Larry Holmes. Holmes came at a bad time and was in Muhammad's shadow, fighting Kenny Norton and Ron Lyle. Larry Holmes lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, and he used to say, "In Easton, the Joneses keep up with the Holmeses."
There's that drive to impress others. A guy came to church recently, and I hadn't seen him in a while. I said, "Wow, you look good." He thanked me. I asked how much weight he'd lost - about 40 pounds. I asked if he was working out, and he said he was working out hard and eating correctly. He had a new haircut with a little spike, just enough edge to it. I said, "Man, you look good. What's the motivation?"
You know where this is going. He said, "I'm going to my 35-year high school reunion." No cardiologist told him to quit eating or smoking - none of that motivated him. But he was going to walk in there and find the cheerleader, and he was the quarterback. The sad thing is both of them were probably training for this moment, and they're going to hook up and be two blimps within a month, eating donuts and everything all over again.
The Endless Drive to Stockpile
There's also a push to stockpile. Again, Solomon saw something meaningless. Ecclesiastes 4:7-8 says, "I saw something meaningless under the sun: There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. 'For whom am I toiling,' he asked, 'and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?' This too is meaningless."
It's an illusion that at some point I'm going to stop. I was talking to another 80-year-old the other day, and I asked what he was doing. He said he was working on some deals. Maybe I don't have the guts, but I asked, "Why? You have to be risk-averse. I would think at 80 you'd slow down." But he loved the deal and found his identity in it.
If I think I'm going to get where I want to go by accumulating more, if it's going to bring me satisfaction, I'm wrong. I'm running a race with no finish line. This isn't meant to deactivate you - if you're 80, go for it. But I'm not sure that's the measure of growing old with dignity.
The Absurdity of Never Having Enough
This drives me nuts when people say, "He's 80 and he still plays golf." "Still" is the word they use - it's like a prelude to your activity. It's the George Bush Senior thing: "He's 90 and he skydives." Well, he doesn't really skydive. They duct tape him to an Army Ranger, and then the Ranger jumps out of the plane. The Ranger jumps out of a plane, but Bush can't even go get the mail. That's not criticism - I'm just saying don't hold that up. That activity is not what makes someone grow old with dignity.
But you start to stockpile, to accumulate, and it's never enough. This is my favorite illustration of this, and it has so many sub-points - it's like a parable. William Randolph Hearst had accumulated everything - the castle and all the rest. He went through his wine phase and his girl phase, kind of like Solomon. Then he got into an art phase with all these amazing pieces.
The Hearst Parable
Hearst became absolutely obsessed with one particular work of art. He had this guy who handled all his art acquisitions, and he said, "I want to buy this. Find it, I want to buy it." The man came back three, four, five months later and said, "I've tracked this thing all over the world, and about 10 years ago, it disappeared."
Hearst said, "I've got to have this. I'm not going to be satisfied until I have it. Find it." So he hired detectives, and finally, his art dealer called him and said, "All right, let's meet. I've got good news and great news. The good news is we found it. The great news is it's in a crate in the basement of your castle. You're the one who bought it 10 years ago."
Isn't that perfect? Isn't that the way it is? That's such a great illustration because it shows how we think: "I've got to have this. I'm obsessed with this. If I get this, I'll be happy. If I win this, I'll be happy. If the Broncos win, I'll be happy." They won, but we're not happy anymore. What are we going to do now? It doesn't end.
The Urgency of Life's Brevity
Work can push you to survive rather than truly live. Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might." Unfortunately, this verse is right up my alley, so let me read it with my emphasis: "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave where you're going, there's neither..."
working nor planning nor knowledge or wisdom. I want to work, but I want to understand all of these things are trending toward my demise.
Well, I took the boys to a high school basketball game. Man, has basketball changed since we played it. It's so fast. Final score, 96-92. That's a lot of points in a high school basketball game.
We're at Chandler High, so I have Haley and the boys, and we're going in, and I said, "Guys, I think this school's 100 years old." And Haley said, "Eh, Chandler High's not 100 years old." Well, I said, "Well, I think it is." So we're in there, and we're about halfway through the warmups, and Haley said, "Look at that." Here's a banner up in the corner: 1917 state runner-up in basketball.
Now, they probably only had to beat two other teams to be runner-up, but I said, "Think of those kids. In this gym, on this floor, those kids are running around, and they're all dead now." I said to Haley, "Who made these stairs? Look at this, I can't, it's so hard to get up." And I'm watching the boys, and they're flying up those stairs. "We're going to the bathroom. Do you want to go?" And I said, "Yeah, I'll meet you there in about a half hour, probably. And then I need another half hour when I'm there, and I'll be back for the overtime." But I mean, it's just boom, boom, boom. But there's an inevitability to that.
Achievement Can Become Hollow
Here's the third thing: achievement can become hollow. We're into this section now that if you've been with us and alert, you recognize familiar territory here in Ecclesiastes 5. More profit doesn't satisfy. "Whoever loves money never has money enough. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income."
Now, take anything out—it's money, but you can put anything into that. If I'm looking for a person, place, or thing to bring me ultimate satisfaction, it's not going to happen. So yesterday, I need to go for a walk. I'm on a walk, trying to walk, I'm trying to get in better shape.
So I go for a walk, I'm going to take the boys, I get down there, and Haley said, "Well, the girls want to go too." So now I'm going on a walk with a 10, eight, four, two-year-old, so this is not going to be high-impact aerobic activity for me. And so I came back, and I said, "You know what, you've earned a coconut bar." I like these coconut ice cream, coconut bars. "You've earned one, you deserve it."
So, and I said, but Sandy had told me, "You only get one of these a day." So it's about three in the afternoon, and the five is coming on, and I thought, "Ah, I'm going to have a coconut bar, and that'll take the edge off, I'm done." Well, I got in there, and I found these mint chocolate chip bars that she eats, and I thought, "Hmm, I wonder, but I'm going to have one of those, instead of the coconut."
So I ate the mint chocolate chip one on the way back to my chair, and I sat down, and it was really good. I love mint chocolate. And so about four o'clock, Brett Baer comes on, and I say, "You know what, Sandy said I could have one coconut bar a day." Last night at 12:20, I'm in the freezer getting my third coconut bar of the night.
It's not going to satisfy. You weren't meant—if you can't figure this out, you know it. You know it intuitively. If I make this deal, it's not enough. If I do this, it's not enough. I'm going to tell you why: because that little desire you have, whatever it is, is only met through a personal relationship with Christ.
More Volume Doesn't Satisfy
So when you get into this, more profit doesn't satisfy. It's kind of similar—more volume doesn't satisfy. "As goods increase, so do those who consume them. What benefit are they to the owner except to feast their eyes on them?" The more you have, the more you spend.
I have great ideas. I think I'd be a good executive producer on TV shows. I've got a couple of great ideas for a TV show. On the home and garden one, they need to do the last house. They do everybody's first house. I think there's a huge market for showing people downsizing. My working title is "The Body Bag House," but I don't think that's going to sell. But the last house.
But this extreme home makeover—I think "Where Are They Now" would be incredible. I'm always curious. They give these people this free, beautiful house. I'd love to come back a year later and see how are they doing. I don't treat free stuff as well as I treat the stuff that I earn. As goods increase, well, that's never enough.
More Authority Doesn't Satisfy
More authority doesn't satisfy. "The sleep of the laborer is sweet. Whether he eats a little or much, the abundance of the rich man permits him no sleep." I think I'm going to have more power. I mean, I'm watching. What are we down to, six candidates on one side and one and a half on the other? We're down to eight candidates.
And one of these men or woman are going to win this thing and they're going to wake up about a year from now and go, "Why did I want this?" All the control, most powerful person in the world. Most powerful person in the world. But you go down to Bethesda and they tell you there's a spot in your lung and you have all the power of the world—you're not going to upset that.
Results Are Unpredictable
Number four: results are unpredictable. I love this. Strong assets are no guarantee. Ecclesiastes 9:11. "I've seen something else under the sun" on an earthly basis. "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned. But time and chance happens to them all."
There's this thing, and we can put different terms on it—luck, providence. There's this thing that happens. The swift don't always win. I enjoy, I don't go hardly anymore, but I always enjoyed going to the racetrack to the horses. It's a beautiful event. And if you're over on the coast, it doesn't get any prettier than Del Mar. You know, watch. I mean, it's just absolutely beautiful track and the ocean's out there.
And as you watch, there's what they call the favored or the chalk. And if you've been at the track very often, you've been at the track once, you've heard the phrase: "He can't lose."
can make him lose. The weight of a $20 bill on his back will bring him to a halt. The favored horse in racing, who is usually the fastest horse based on past performance, wins one third of the time.
I watch Fraser every night. I was watching one the other night where Niles comes in and his dad is watching a horse race on TV. Niles said, "Oh, which one is yours?" And he said, "The five." Niles said, "He's taking an almost zen-like approach to this race," meaning he's about 23 lengths back. But the fastest horse doesn't win. The smartest guy doesn't close the deal all the time.
There used to be a show on CNN called Pinnacle where they'd interview business leaders and CEOs. They were interviewing this guy one day who I'd never heard of. He'd made a hundred million dollars the year before on something called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—$25 million a word. They said, "We're fascinated by this. How did you go from conception to planning to design to manufacturing to distribution to marketing to sales? How did you do that?" Here's what he said: "I don't know."
They said, "Well, let's take another run at this. How did you come up with this?" He said, "I had this product and I went to Hasbro and Fisher Price and Mattel, and they all said no, but my kids were fascinated by it. So I made these drawings and they started coloring them, and I made a coloring book, and then I made a book you read, and then I started a Saturday morning infomercial—those are the cartoons—and now I have this product."
Success Doesn't Always Follow Logic
I have a friend and we have this author we like. I'm not going to give you his name because you'll read it and go crazy, but my brother turned me on to this guy. He said, "I just read a novel and the main character in this book is you." I said, "Well, that's got to be fascinating." He said, "I'm telling you, it's you."
So my buddy and I started reading these novels and they're really good. He called in November and said, "Hey, he's going to be at Poisoned Pen. Let's go down for a signing. Let's have dinner first. Where do you want to eat?" I said, "We're downtown, we'll go to Valley Ho. We'll have dinner at the Ho, we'll go over to Poisoned Pen, we'll have a great night."
This guy's talking and he's great. During the Q&A in a room about half this size, people asked, "When you write, how much time do you spend outlining the book?" He said, "Well, I don't outline it." "How many drafts do you do before you submit it to the publisher?" "One."
What I discovered is the room was filled with people who all had a book at home they wanted to write, and I know what they're doing. They're going, "I'm smarter than this guy. I'm a better writer than this guy." It just doesn't always shake out that way.
That can be frustrating, can't it? It can be frustrating to walk around the office and go, "I'm smarter than her, smarter than him, smarter than her, better than him, work harder than him, work harder than him. And I'm 28th out of 29, and they're first and second."
Long Hours Are No Guarantee
Here's something else: long hours are no guarantee. This is a killer because you think, "Well, I may not be the smartest, I'll just work harder."
Ecclesiastes 8:16 says, "When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe man's labor on earth—His eyes not seeing sleep day or night—then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all His efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning."
This is pursuing understanding of life: "I want to understand life." You can be the most brilliant philosophical mind in the world, but if you don't have the code—the Bible—you're never going to figure this out. That's what he's saying. I can look at this, I can study, I can work, but I can't understand it.
The Need for God's Perspective
I think my word for 2016 is perspective. I have to see it as God sees it. We used that definition of faith a couple weeks ago: seeing my circumstances from God's perspective.
So that deal that blew up? It's not the end of the world. That deal that you made where they just had that celebration for you—salesperson of the year? You understand, this was a speech I got every year. This was designed to motivate us. We get this speech on January 2nd every year: "You understand, we're all at zero." Can't I enjoy that moment? "No, we're all at zero. Go get them, Tiger." I've got to have some sense in that.
I can work hard. The biggest deal I ever did, here's what happened: Jim Wentworth came out of his office and looked around because he thought it was a big deal, and I was the only poor sap there. He would have never called me otherwise. He said, "Can you call this guy and check this out?" Out of this, we made three big deals. I did nothing.
I had days where I would cold call, be on the phone all day—do, do, do, do, do—and nothing. It's not saying don't cold call and wait for Wentworth to come to your office. It's just saying you need to understand that you throw the dice and God determines the outcome.
Five Things You Need to Know
So what you need to know—five things, I think—real quickly.
Number one: enjoy a simple lifestyle. Keep it as simple as you can. One thing complicates another, and another, and another.
Jim Elliott was a young man who wrote in his diary almost 60 years ago. He was 21 and thinking about getting married. He said, "I've been musing lately on the extremely dangerous, cumulative effect of earthly things. One may have good reason, for example, to want a wife, and he may have one legitimately, but with a wife comes Peter the Pumpkin Eater's proverbial dilemma. He must find a place to keep her. So a wife demands a house. A house in turn requires curtains. Curtains require rugs. Rugs require a washing machine."
et cetera. A house with this thing must soon become a home, and children the unintended outcome. The needs multiply as they're met. Car demands a garage, a garage land, land a garden, garden tools. Tools need to be sharpened.
Enjoy a Productive Life
Here's the second thing. Enjoy a productive life. Find satisfaction in your work. You get some of the Christians, and they go, "I ain't on that work. That was after the fall." No, work became toil after the fall. You're designed to work.
That's why when you stop, every guy I talk to that's 55, 60, 65 years old, backing off, I'll say, "What's the biggest challenge?" "I gotta find something to do. I'll volunteer at Barrett Jackson. I'll pick up the garbage at the 16th hole." I'm not demeaning any of those. I'm saying there's a reason. You're designed to work.
Embrace Your Human Condition
I'm going to give you three, four, and five all together, and you gotta go. Enjoy the human condition. Enjoy your divine allotment, and enjoy your consistent preoccupation. Your days are few.
I called a friend who's a doc on Monday, and I said, "I want to meet. I want to run some stuff by you. You're not involved, and I'll buy you breakfast. That'll be your co-pay, and just give me what you think." So he said, "I can meet anytime Tuesday." So we're meeting, and I said, "Gosh, you were really..." He said, "I retired." "Really? How's that going?" He said, "You know, kind of tough." He said, "My grandson said to me, 'So you're not a doctor anymore?'"
His father-in-law, 91, had a stroke, so he's now at a different hospital, and the doctor's now wheeling his father-in-law around the hospital. Now he's dealing with a medical profession from that end, talking about so many different things. I said, "How's it going?" He said, "You know what? I'm so thankful." He said, "Literally, I get up every day and have a cup of coffee, and say, 'God, thank You for this coffee.'" It's to develop that attitude of thanksgiving for what he has. It may not be everything I want, but in God's economy, at this point in time, it's everything I need.
The Bottom Line
So we close it out, getting control of your life. Bottom line, finances, appetite, schedule, career, all of life, is I need to begin to see these things as God sees them in the context that God sees them. Understanding under the sun, from a human perspective, there'll never be enough, and there'll never be a finish line, and I'll be as dissatisfied after I get it as before.
That's not to kill appetite and to kill striving, but it's to say, I need to put the end game in its proper perspective.
Father, thank You for this. Let us see the world as You see it. Thank You for these people who come out so faithful every Thursday morning. God bless our time. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.