Learning for Life
Tom Shrader teaches the second principle for finishing strong in faith: developing a lifelong passion for learning. Using 2 Timothy 3:16 as the foundation, he emphasizes that learning is a mark of wisdom, allows believers to fulfill the great commandment to love God with heart and mind, and is essential for spiritual growth. He challenges older believers not to close themselves off to new information, showing how staying curious about both God's Word and the world around us enables meaningful engagement with others and deeper intimacy with Christ.
“The more I know him, the more I love him, and the more I love him, the more I want to know him.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Tools for Finishing Strong
Recorded: September 26, 2018
Duration: 49 min
Themes: learning, wisdom, growth, perseverance, passion, curiosity, faithfulness, discipline, older adult, approaching retirement, senior believer, aging christian, mentor, experienced believer, struggling with purpose, facing life transitions
Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:16, Proverbs 9:9, Acts 17:23, Philippians 3
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual growth, biblical learning, scripture study, spiritual maturity, discipleship, christian education, lifelong formation
Full Transcript
So it's good to see you this morning. I need to get a good night's sleep tonight to get ready for the hearing tomorrow. This is a curse for me, because I want to get away from it, and I can't put it down. So we'll see what happens. I do think it's a time to pray.
When Sandy and I were getting married, there were three things I cared about: sports, politics, and television. There were three things Sandy could not care less about: sports, politics, and television. So she'll walk through and I'll say, "This thing's a mess," and she'll go, "Then you should pray harder." But that's true. That's good advice.
Starting a New Series
We are in a series, and I'm always suspicious when somebody presenting says, "I'm so excited, I'm so enthused." Forget it, just do it. But let me start by saying, I'm so excited, because it's coming together for me, which is important.
Let me take you through a little history by way of reminder. We started six months ago. I got in the car today, I have three quarters of a tank of gas, and I put that gas in there in February. That's pretty cool. So I've beaten the system.
We started in February and March with a discussion on aging. I didn't know how, because the more I got into it, the more I saw that it was a really narrow scope. I didn't know how to articulate it and formulate it. But what happened is, and this will happen over time, as I talked to people, and Glen Iwata was key in this, we started to see that people weren't ready for retirement.
The Retirement Reality
I get up early Wednesday, my day. I'm going to come in here. I get up early, got a little ritual I go through, and I watch about a half hour of TV. The last ad I saw was for a financial planner. He's sitting down, pitching a client, and the client said, "I realized today, I'm closer to retirement than I am to college graduation." Well, here's what I realized: I'm closer to death than I was to retirement. I mean, it's just moving along.
The whole thing that we saw, and the statistics are really staggering, is that 50% of people who are 55 or older have saved no money for retirement. Zero. And I think, and these stats are weird, and if you're a stat person, you're going to come up after today and argue with me. I don't want to argue with you. Send me an email, and my email address is idontcare.com, so I don't want to argue with you. But the average person at 65 has saved about $10,000 for retirement. That's two meals at Zennberger. I mean, you're not going to get anything.
Beyond Financial Preparation
Here's what I discovered, because we know that. Here's what I discovered, and that triggered this series, is that that is a quantitative measure of how people are preparing for retirement. What I discovered is that people aren't prepared emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, for retirement.
So I started getting emails from people saying, "This is the toughest stage of my life. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I don't have the resources. My friends are dying. My spouse is dying. I relocated from Minnesota. I don't know how to make friends. I'm not prepared spiritually."
So this series got tweaked a little bit from aging, whatever that was, to how to finish strong. And I'm still playing with that. It could be tools for finishing strong. But here's what I discovered: You can't finish strong if you don't start strong. And the stuff we're talking about should have been in place when you were 25 or 35. Never too late to start, but never too early to begin.
The Series Structure
We're working through 10 or 12 things. If you have grandkids or kids, I know this series is something that you can use to dialogue with them. It's up on the website. We're doing some work revamping the website. You should be getting every week from me an email. I want to say blog, but I just haven't gotten comfortable with that term yet. But you should be getting something from me. And they are profound, that's all I know. Now if you have any idea for this week's, let me know, because I'm out of ideas. But if you're not getting something, leave me something with your address and your email address and we'll get it to you.
Tool One: The Bible as Final Authority
Week one, step one, tool one: establish the Bible as the final authority in your life. So it's 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness." Those four words are in that verse; they're key words.
Teaching means doctrine. It's not so much the process of teaching, it's what you're teaching. Reproof is rebuke. It's to confront you. So you sit down with somebody and you say, "You know, this is what's going on." And they say to you, "Who made you judge? Who made you so smart? How can you say that?" And you can say, "That's not me, that's what God says. And He made the rules."
And then it's good for correction. This is the only time that that Greek word appears in the New Testament. And it means to restore, to return to its proper use. We're at a time, here's a word I hear every day, repurposing. We're repurposing this. We're repurposing that department. Well, correction is to restore to its proper place and position. So if this chair is sitting over on the floor, and I put it back here, and I sit in it, I've corrected it.
The last is training in righteousness. So here's how you live. If you want to be equipped for 2018 and beyond, you'll go to this book. So real easy to remember: the doctrine, the reproof, the correction, the training in righteousness. The Bible tells us what's right, what's not right, how to get right, how to stay right.
The Unchanging Foundation
So that's what you need. Things are changing all the time, all around you. And the thing that doesn't change is God and His Word. So in this whole world that we live in, and I confess, most of you know if you've been around, I tend to be pessimistic as I look at the
The Reality of Information Overload
I have no reason to think this world is going to get better. But that doesn't mean I'm hopeless. My hope is in God, in His promises, in His character, in His faithfulness, in His sovereignty. As I look at the world that seems to be getting more and more confused and gray, God is not in heaven going, "Wow, that's a tough one, I don't know." He's answered it.
Step two is to develop a lifelong passion for learning. I'm going to fluctuate between the aging idea and where I am now. As you get older, I have a friend that describes it this way: my patent office is closed. I'm not looking for a bunch of new information.
The Commitment of Medical Professionals
I have friends who are professionals, doctors. I have this new admiration, and maybe it's because I go to so many of these guys, but these doctors, men and women—the last surgeon I had was a lady that was absolutely unbelievable. She's from Russia. I think I told you about her. She came from Russia to the University of Arizona, and I said, "Really? How was Tucson?" And she said, "It is desolate." I said, "Well, really, that's exactly right. This isn't exactly the garden spot, but it is compared to Tucson."
She went to Mayo for medical school. They had 3,000 applications last year at Mayo Medical School. Fifty students got in. She did a residency in Rochester. She decided she wanted to do the procedures she did on my head and she'll be doing on my face, so she went to Yale to be trained. These people are really smart.
What she tells me as I start to talk to these doctors is they spend an hour or two a day just reading professional data, just to stay current with new information. As I get older, I tend to go, "No, I don't need that. I don't need to be current." I'm going to make a pitch that, yes, you do.
The Exponential Growth of Information
Now, I'm going to give you some numbers that will discourage you in this process, but make a point. It feels like there's so much information out there—that feeling is real. I'll just read you some things. I don't know who figures this stuff out.
The weekend edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person living in London would encounter during their entire life if they lived in the 17th century. If you took information and stacked it up from the beginning of time until 1845, you'd have a stack one inch high. From 1845 to 1945, it would be two inches high. From 1945 until today, it would be the Washington Monument. That's how fast this is coming.
I found this the other day. I don't even know what to do with this, but I'll read you the quote: Buckminster Fuller created the knowledge doubling curve, a way of quantifying this. He noticed that until 1900, human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II, knowledge was doubling every 25 years.
The Acceleration of Knowledge
Today, things are not simply different as types of knowledge have different rates of growth. For example, nanotechnology knowledge is doubling every two years. Clinical knowledge is doubling every 18 months. The average human knowledge is doubling now every 13 months. According to IBM, the build-out of the Internet of Things will lead to the doubling of knowledge every 12 hours.
If you're a freshman at GCU, ASU, MCC—or if you couldn't get into any of those, you're in the PhD program at the University of Arizona (that's so bad, I just got a letter from somebody chastising me for that; I don't know who it was, their handwriting was so poor and the sentence was so poorly structured, but if it's you, I apologize)—but if you're a freshman in college and not studying history (though that's shady), but if you're in a tech thing, what you learn as a freshman is obsolete by graduation. That's how fast all this stuff is changing around you.
The Evolution of Computing Power
It's all this computer technology. The first computer—and there's debate about it—but in 1944, the computer they were using was the size of an 18-wheeler. It weighed the equivalent of 17 Camaros. It burned 144 watts of power. It calculated 5,000 equations a second. That's all in here, except the computing part now does millions of equations in a second.
More amazing technology: I have more technology here than when they sent Neil Armstrong to the moon. So that's the world you're living in. When you take that birthday—we just had a birthday party—somebody's making a fortune on these balloons and cards. You get a card, you open it up, and it plays "Happy Birthday" to you. There's more technology in that card than existed, computing power-wise, than existed in the entire world prior to 1950.
The Internet Explosion
When George Herbert Walker Bush left office, there were 55 websites on the internet. Fifty-five. I just checked it yesterday. As of today, they estimate there are 1 billion websites. With a note: most of these websites never get a visitor. But that's the world you live in.
Embracing Technology Rather Than Rejecting It
As an older person to an older person, you can push away from that. When I watch a guy say, "Oh, the newfangled technology, it's too complex," it's not complex. It's easier than it's ever been. Here's how I know: I can do it. If you're going to say, "It's too fast, it's too complicated, I don't know it," then you might as well go down and tattoo on your forehead, "I will be irrelevant forever."
It's Wednesday, it's football season, 2 o'clock today. You know where I'm going to be? It's where I am every Wednesday at 2 o'clock during football season. I'm going to be at home with my grandson, setting our fantasy football team for Sunday. Which, by the way, we're 3-0, which is pretty amazing. It's his whole thing. It opens up conversations about values in life. He'll go, "We need to dump him, he's hurt." "He's got a wife and kids. We're going to dump him?"
But if I said to him—I want you to see this—if I said to him...
What do you think about Kirk Cousins? He'd say whatever. But the technology allows us to go deep in this conversation. He'll say, look at his statistics. He was 34 for 40 last week. It's a total connect.
My six-year-old granddaughter will text me. If you want to reach your grandkids, I'm telling you, you can give them a book. They're not going to read it. You can text them and they'll talk to you. I'll text Braden and say, I'm getting ready to buy you a book. Do you have any topics you're interested in?
This was a great moment for me. I was feeling beat up, abused, irrelevant, sick. I was ready to cash it in. I didn't want to know anything. He came over, he was so excited. I said, buddy, what do you want to know? Here's what he said to me: I want to know everything. And I wanted to say, well, the world will take that out of you. I said, you know what? Let's get started. Let's start with history.
Paul's Example in Athens
I want you to equate this with your faith. In Acts 17, Paul comes into Athens and he's there and he's getting ready to do what he does and he's waiting for the guys to come and see Him. So if it were me, I would check into the hotel and watch TV. He takes a tour of the city.
And he's now, a little bit later, standing in front of the intellectuals, the decision makers, the Senate Judiciary Committee. And he says to them, men of Athens, I observed that you're very religious people. I was passing through and examining—it's Acts 17:23—objects of your worship. And I found an altar with the inscription to an unknown God. And he says, therefore, what you worshiped in ignorance, I proclaim to you.
You see what happened? He's walking around and this is how it works for me. And so I want it to work that way for you or some variation. I'll read something and I'll go, I don't know exactly what that means, but it's going to matter someday. Paul sees this statue to an unknown God. He puts it in here and then he gets up and he says, let me tell you about your world. You got this unknown God, who by definition is unknown. Let me tell you about the God you can know. That's how you connect with the world around you.
Connecting With Others Through Learning
I can't remember who I was watching the other day, some NFL guy. And he said, and he's won two or three Super Bowls. He said, it doesn't matter when you're done with the Super Bowl, you're still not fulfilled. There's something more. Well, you come right along and say that thing that's missing, that's that God-shaped vacuum. And here's how you fill it with Jesus.
You don't need to sit down with these guys and say, let's do a Bible study. I'm not against that. I'm just saying there's people around you all day that are asking you to tell them about Jesus. They just use a different language.
They'll be, you know, if you travel, Paul's great at it—I don't want to embarrass him, but Paul's great at this. Paul travels a chunk for work. He's constantly in restaurants, bars, burger joints by himself on the road, ending up having conversations with people about Jesus. Because they'll say, what do you do? And I do this. How do you like it? Sales are better than they've ever been. Oh, wow. That's cool. Are you happy? No, not really. Let me tell you why. Because you weren't designed to be made happy with a person, place, or thing. You were designed to be made happy and complete with Jesus.
So we're going to talk about this more in week three or four.
Five Points on Lifelong Learning
Here you go. Lifelong learning. Five points. And I just did a 28-minute introduction. So we could be in a jam.
Point number one: learning is a mark of wisdom. If you want to be wise, you have to learn. Proverbs 9, verse 9, the author writes this, pretty simple: Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser. Teach a righteous man and he will increase in his learning.
Now, we make a distinction between knowledge and wisdom. So I know guys that could build a car, but they've got no idea where they put the key. I know people that are so smart, you know, there's their name and more degrees than a thermometer after. But they're just dumb as a brick when it comes to life. Well, that's the difference between wisdom and knowledge. Knowledge is this accumulation of fact and it becomes a basis for wisdom. It's what we'll look at next week. It's the flip side of this. I learn and as I learn, I can now become wise.
So if this sounds familiar, it should. We want a transformed heart with an informed mind. That leads to a radical life.
The Great Commandment and the Mind
Here's the second point: learning allows you to fulfill the great commandment. Love the Lord God with all your heart and mind. This Christian thing is not intellectual suicide. God speaks to our mind.
And historically, I don't know if it's necessarily true now. Historically, the greatest minds in the culture were Orthodox believers. Jonathan Edwards, and if you get the chance, which it's so cool to look around, see all the phones. If you Google Jonathan Edwards, and you Google images, there's an iconic Jonathan Edwards picture. And it's him, it's a stoic. I mean, this does not look like a guy you want to go have a beer with. Okay, he's not at home watching the Penn State Ohio State game. Okay, he's reading about the origins of the word Ohio. He's not a fun guy.
He led a revival, the Great Awakening. The Encyclopedia Britannica, which I presume doesn't even exist anymore, identified Jonathan Edwards as the greatest mind America ever produced. He wrote this book called Religious Affections. It's a classic. You're never going to read it. But Google it and get a couple paragraphs.
But he was worried because he saw this revival coming. And his fear was, it was just emotional. That's always my concern with children's ministry or summer camp. If you can't get, if you cannot get a five-year-old to give his heart to Jesus, you suck as a person. I mean, it's simple. You can sit down with a five-year-old. But do they know what they did? That's always a battle. Both of my daughters made a profession of faith at about age five.
My fear was that it was to please not me, because they didn't care, but their mom. And that they'd never understand how sinful they really were. They both come to grips with that. But it's an intellectual pursuit.
R.C. Sproul writes this: God made us with a harmony of heart and head, of action and thought. The more we know, the more we're able to love Him. To be controlled in our hearts, we must first be controlled in our mind. Religious thoughts are a prerequisite for religious affection and action.
I need to know Him. And it just happens. The more I know Him, the more I love Him. The more I love Him, the more I want to know Him.
The Marriage Illustration
There's nowhere better to illustrate it than in marriage. And I've done it twice now. It's been the same in both instances. Sandy and I got married after a short time of dating. And I knew her. I knew her blood type and her favorite color. I ran a credit check. I didn't want a bunch of problems. I knew a lot about her.
But then I had to live with her. And we spent some time sorting out which side of the bed we were going to sleep on. Because I spent 35 years on one side of the bed. And that was her side of the bed, too. I didn't sleep well on the other side. I gave in.
You could not find in this world two more different people than we are. Every day, she will get up a bowl bigger than this, filled with lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, and turkey. And the only thing I like that's green is chocolate mint ice cream. She thinks sports are stupid that they're to participate in. So right now, she's climbing out of the pool. She gets up every day at 4:30. And she'll swim for an hour or two. She's climbing out of the pool. She's got to be at the airport. But on a normal day, she would come home from work at 3:45. She'll go to the gym for 45 minutes. Not to watch people, but to do weights and all this other stuff. And I had no interest in that. Sports, to me, I watch.
I've never been around a person more driven, more systematic. She'll sit down on Sunday night. And she will say to me, "What are your goals for this week?" Seriously? Honestly, I don't know. "Well, then how do you know if you had a good week?" I didn't make any goals. That was a good week. "But Tom, you have no measurement." I mean, it started a couple of years ago to drive me a little crazy. I mean, this is nuts. But I realized it's who she is. And the more I understand that, the more I can really love her and appreciate her.
It's that way with God. Jesus died on the cross for me. Check that box. Let's go back to that. While you were a sinner, while you were helpless, while you were separated from Him, He died for you. That's a game changer. That's a bombshell information. And as that sinks in, I love Him more and more and more.
Learning is Essential for Spiritual Growth
The third thing is learning is essential for spiritual growth. Martin Lloyd-Jones offers this piece of advice: Let us never forget the message of the Bible is addressed primarily to the mind for understanding.
Paul writes in Philippians 3, and he gives you his resume, essentially. And he talks about all of his pedigree. He was literally a super Jew. Eight days circumcised, which is his way of saying I'm from a religious family. Not just that, I'm of the nation of Israel, tribe of Benjamin, Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, a zealot. "Whatever things were gained to me, I count them as loss." I had all this stuff. And it's loss compared to, and this is the contrast, knowing Christ Jesus. Not knowing about Him, not loving Him, knowing Him. Because when I know Him, it's going to affect the way I live.
The Testimony of Job
The book of Job, and I just went back and reread Job, the early part of the book. If you ever feel sorry for yourself, go read those first three or four chapters. This poor guy is just getting hammered everywhere. His business is bad, his staff is dying, his resources are being taken away. "At least I have my health," he gets sick. The only thing God didn't take from him is his wife, his helpmate, whose advice to him was curse God and die.
At the end of the book, here's what he says: "Before I heard about you, now I've seen you." That's what life does. That's what hardship does.
It's impossible if you've never hurt physically to relate to somebody who hurts. You can't do it. I can talk to you. We went through a period here at the church where we had three ladies who lost their babies in childbirth. I mean, it's brutal. And every time I went down to that hospital, I would be there and I didn't know what to say. I knew what not to say. I never said, "I understand how you feel." I have no idea how you feel. I know I've hurt before, but never like this. But it's something powerful when another mom walks in and said, "I lost a baby too." That's why a support group works. I've been there. Life teaches you that.
Learning Comes from Discipline
The fourth thing: learning comes from discipline, not by accident. When Paul's writing in 2 Timothy, and he's telling us about all of this stuff, we need to learn the scripture, he tells us about a farmer and a soldier who are disciplined, who are in for the long term, the long haul, not the next election, not the next quarter close, not the year end.
Years ago, and I'm one of those guys, I get on the internet and I just start clicking and you can end up in some places that you have to get out of there. But I ended up on this trail that led me to C.J. Mahaney, you might know that name, Sovereign Grace. Well, he was doing these interviews and I read these interviews with three of them. Jerry Bridges, you may or may not know that name, 85 years old, he wrote—I think he's passed away—but he's written all these books. One year I decided I'm going to take whatever year it was and read all the Jerry Bridges books and I didn't have a shot at it, but incredible books. And John
Three Giants and Their Morning Routines
Piper—that's an easier assignment because if you've read one of his books, you've read all of his books. And the last one was with Dr. Grudem. I'm going to read you something, and I know you can check out at this point, but don't. Hang in there, it's worth it.
This is Mahaney talking to Bridges: "Describe your morning devotions." Bridges responds: "On a normal day, I get up at five. I spend from 5:30 to 7:30—I don't know what he does between five and 5:30, that would be interesting—reading and meditating on scripture, spending time in prayer. I begin with what I've tried to teach others to do: I preach the gospel to myself. My prayer time starts with thanksgiving." He goes on to talk about how he prays for the progression of the gospel around the world, for his family, his organization, his leaders, his growth.
"What are you reading?" Most of you will not be familiar with this book. He said, "I'm reading 'The Existence and Attributes of God' by Stephen Charnock." Any of you know that book? It's about this thick. So you're reading Ziggy and he's reading that.
Now he goes to John Piper: "Talk about your morning." Piper responds: "I get up two mornings at 5:15, four mornings at 6:15, and one morning at six. I set aside an hour for prayer and Bible reading, just reading through the Bible."
Wayne Grudem's Detailed Approach
Dr. Grudem, describe your morning. "I usually wake"—this is, if you know Grudem, this is vintage Grudem right here—"I wake up about 6 a.m., sometimes as late as seven or 7:30 if I'd been up late the night before. I need between seven and eight hours of sleep or I don't think clearly."
"I get a cup of tea and one of Margaret's excellent high-protein muffins and I open my Bible. I simply sequentially read through the Bible. I'll read for 15 or 20 minutes, underlining some verses, maybe making a brief note. Many times I wonder about the Greek or the Hebrew and I'll check it briefly, but that's not the point of the study. I'm looking for God to teach me directly from His Word with the application to my life. I usually camp on a verse or phrase. I ponder its application. Then I pause for five or 10 minutes, waiting for the Lord's presence and thinking about the verse."
"I pick up my notebook with different pages for different people, thinking of things to pray for, various things in my life: Margaret, the kids, my parents, members of my family, Phoenix Seminary, our government, our nation. Take 15 or 20 minutes, sometimes longer." At the end of this—and I know he does this; last time I had breakfast with him, he said, "I prayed about whether to come or not." I said, "Well, I didn't." It said eight o'clock to meet you.
The Discipline Behind Excellence
But he said, "At the end of the time, I usually bring before the Lord my to-do list, my schedule. I pray about it, asking the Lord to help me make top priorities for the day. I end the time with another two or three, maybe five minutes, resting in the presence of the Lord. I find those times of quietness when I'm not praying about anything in particular, but resting in the Lord. He will bring things to mind: person I should contact, things I need to write, how my time should be spent."
Now, I pulled that out to you, knowing that likely that's not your morning—it's not mine, and I know it should be. He starts with these three guys—not just three guys who are off the street. These are big time guys. Every one of them has forgotten more about the gospel of John than I'll never know about the whole Scripture. These are giant guys.
What do they do every morning? Well, if you're a pianist, it's the equivalent of practicing your scales. If you're an athlete, it's the equivalent of stretching. It's interesting—Mahaney had no trepidation about asking, "Tell me about your morning devotion." He assumed they took place. How did he make that assumption?
The Choice We All Face
I'd love to be Wayne Grudem intellectually anyway, or Jerry Bridges, or Piper. I'm not going to be—I don't have the intellectual capacity, but I'm not going to work that hard.
I was talking to a guy the other day, and he was saying when he was in college, he had a music professor. He sat down with his music professor, and his professor said to him, "You could be a great pianist someday." He said, "Really, what do I have to do?" And he said, "You need to be in here four to six hours a day practicing. You need to do this, you need to do that." And the guy said to him, "I think I'll just be good."
I get that you want to be this super saint. You're never going to be if you don't discipline yourself to read this scripture. And did you see they didn't just read it—they made notes about it. They didn't say, "Oh, how can I study this to teach a lesson," but "God, how can You teach me through this?" This is a very personal thing.
The Path Forward
If you want to finish strong, you have to be a lifelong learner of the culture, the world, the scripture. Now you got all this knowledge—what do you do with it? Well, you need to make some decisions. We'll talk about it next week.
Father, take this word, apply it to our minds, our hearts. Let us be people who know You and love You. And because we love You, we want to know You more. And the more we know You, the more we want to love You. God, do this work in our life. We ask it in Christ's name, amen.
Have a great week. I'll see you next week.