Integration of our Faith
Tom Shrader examines Paul's words in Philippians 3 about pressing on toward spiritual maturity, emphasizing that Christian faith must be deeply personal but not private. He challenges believers to integrate their faith into every aspect of life - business, parenting, relationships, and daily decisions - rather than compartmentalizing it. Using illustrations from shopping cart courtesy to business ethics, Shrader demonstrates how authentic Christianity transforms all of life through the humility and character of Christ.
“Your faith is a deeply personal matter, but it's not a private matter.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Tools for Finishing Strong
Recorded: October 17, 2018
Duration: 39 min
Themes: integration, authenticity, character, maturity, humility, transformation, integrity, witness, business owner, parent, new believer, struggling with compartmentalization, seeking purpose, workplace challenges, young adult, growing in faith
Scripture: Philippians 2:5, Philippians 3:4-14, 1 Peter 2:11, 1 Peter 2:17, Romans 12:1-2, James 2:14, Isaiah 55:8-9, 2 Timothy 2:4, Acts 17
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, christian living, discipleship, holistic faith, biblical worldview, christlikeness, practical theology
Full Transcript
This is really an interesting series to me. I developed it maybe 10 years ago and keep tweaking it. It could be a great series for somebody to take, one of you, and run with it. It's got the potential to be a book, I think. It's got just great nuances to it.
The principle is things are changing all around us all the time. I also thought about it as kind of the next step. It starts with the assumption that you're a Christian. That you know Jesus. You know Him in a personal way. You're not just involved in religion. And now what? Now how do I live? Because God obviously has something in mind. If all He was trying to do was get me to heaven, He would have taken me at that moment 32, 33 years ago, whatever it is. But He left me here for a reason. And how do I navigate myself in the midst of this?
Building on the Foundation
So if you have Bibles, you can open them to Philippians chapter 3. I want to read a passage and then come back and this will be the last 20 minutes or so. But we start by saying the Bible is the Word of God. Now I understand not just the Bible. We looked at those illustrations. We talked about interviews with Jerry Bridgeson, John Piper and Wayne Grudem. I'm going back to this word again and again.
Also, I live in this world that's changing, growing, developing. So I need to understand that. Now it's time to live life. I need to make good decisions. I need to do what's right because it's right. And last week is one of those lessons. I really got into that. You can take that, develop it in a variety of ways. But it says, now I live life boldly, confidently. Not based on me, not based on a skill set that I have, but based on Christ and who He is.
Now I want to start to take the focus and go, okay, that's pretty much been me. Now what do I do with it? Here's step number five: I need to integrate, not segregate my faith. So all of a sudden, my faith has to now become a key part of everything that I do.
Faith That Infiltrates Everything
There was a wonderful moment, there are a bunch of them really, in the vice presidential debate. But there was a wonderful moment. It was the last question. It had to do with, you two are Catholics. How does your Catholic faith affect your view on abortion? And I can't even remember who was moderating anymore, but whoever it was said, Congressman Ryan, you go first.
Before he gave the answer, he gave a little bit of a spiel that you've heard in here a billion times. So obviously, I think he's brilliant. And what he said is, I want to make this point. My faith infiltrates every area of my life. I can't take my faith and isolate it out of it. And then he went on to give an answer. And then Vice President Biden gave, arguably to me, the worst answer you can give. I'm personally against this abortion, but I'm not going to enforce it on anybody else. And that could start a whole debate. Forget the abortion issue for now. That comment of Ryan's was the point that we make again and again. And it becomes absolutely key that your faith—so here's the tagline now—your faith is a deeply personal matter, but it's not a private matter.
A Business Lesson I'll Never Forget
The biggest screwing I ever got in business. But I'm over it, and I mean that. But I remember, it becomes iconic, it's classic. So this guy had a Bible on his credenza. So the ESV Study Bible, you always have the ESV Study Bible. It doesn't get any bigger than this. Well, his Bible is like three times this. It's one of those you put on the coffee table, make sure you never read.
So he's got that Bible on his credenza. And I'm in there, it's clear now I'm not going to get paid. And we're way into six figures he's screwing me out of. Clear it isn't going to happen. And I'm not mature as I thought I was. I'm pretty much ready to leave. And then he said something, I can't remember what it was, and it set me off like a rocket. And I said to him, I thought you were a Christian. And he delivered the classic line, I am, but it doesn't affect the way I do business.
And I thought, well, man, if anybody ever questions you on that, you have to give me a call, because that was bad right there. If I brought 12 of you in that didn't know anything about real estate and said, here are the facts, I'd bring in 7 billion people, I'd win every time. But all of a sudden, for me, that moment went away from the deal and into, that's a big statement. Is that true? Well, obviously it's true, it just happened. Is that the way we're supposed to live?
Faith That Affects Everything
Here's what God says, this faith is radical in your life. It goes to the very core of who you are. And it has to affect the way you do business, the way you interact with one another. If you're a parent, the way you parent. If you're a kid, you're obedient to your parents. It has to affect a marriage if you have it. It has to affect everything. It has to affect the way you live.
I was talking Sunday, and I was talking about going to the grocery store, and I was talking about the Bible's teaching is to be kind and courteous to everybody. 1 Peter 2:17, honor all men. That's what it means. And I was saying, I hadn't been in the grocery store ever in my whole life until Susan was really, really sick, and then I started going to the store. I love going to the grocery store. I learned a couple things right away. When you go right in, you send them your deli order. They screw you at the deli place. They make you stand there. You always wait there. So I send my deli order in, then I go by and pick it up.
Even Shopping Carts Matter
There's one thing I hate about the grocery store. It's a little thing, trust me. And you couldn't guess it. I hate the shopping carts left in the middle of the parking lot, and they don't put them in the right... I hate it. I can't imagine how rude you have to be to unload everything and then drive away and leave that cart there.
I believe your Christian faith affects where you park. It affects where I park, because now I always park right next to that thing. So I can go like that. My daughter Haley said, you've never gone to the store
with four kids, and the oldest is five. And I said, yeah, maybe. And she said, well, you alienated every young mom in the place. And I said, whatever. It's true. I'd be ashamed if you're using that as an excuse to leave that cart in the middle of the parking lot.
See, it's that common courtesy. It affects everything. All of a sudden, you start to go, what does this mean to other people? What if I didn't take that closest spot, but left it for the mom with four kids? It's all sorts of stuff like that. It has to affect the way I live. It has to affect the way you govern, the way you draw. It has to affect everything.
Character Over Competency
When Benjamin Franklin wrote about leadership, he said there are two characteristics that are essential to leadership: competency and character. And if you can only choose one, choose character. Let's see how far we have declined as a nation.
So we define character. There are all sorts of different definitions, but the pop culture definition of character is: character is what you do when nobody's looking. That's it—character is what you do when nobody's looking. So we've got a guy, I'm not talking about now, but we had a guy not long ago who was president of the United States. He didn't have sex, but the girl with him had sex around or near the Oval Office. And the general consensus was, we don't care what he does in his private life. We don't care what he does when no one's looking. So where's character?
Sandy and I were watching the debate the other night and all the talking heads were saying, they won't get after each other and you can't do that with people in the room, real humans. And I said to Sandy, that's just not true anymore. We have evolved so far as a society that everybody there wants to see a food fight. And they got to see them go toe to toe. So if I can only have one of these, it's this idea of character.
The Lifelong Struggle
So I want to just slam one point home today and it's that idea of here's the culture, here's the world around you. We say world, we don't mean just planet, it's the world system. And here's that struggle. And it's not just a struggle that takes place one time, you resolve it and it's done. It's going to last all your life. It's that struggle between the flesh and the spirit, the world, the temporary and the eternal.
So Philippians chapter 3 and we're going to look at verse 12. I'm going to come back and put this in context. But Paul's writing, he's writing about this life that he lives, this desire to know Christ and know Him crucified. He said, verse 12, Philippians 3, "Not that I've already obtained it, or I've already become perfect, but I press on in order that I might lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I don't regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
Paul's talking about not just the life that he wants to live, it's knowing Christ, it's coming in that relationship with Him which he already has, and now a vibrant union with Him. Powerful language. I am pressing on, I'm forgetting, I'm striving. Get the picture of a runner in a race, not necessarily a marathon, but a sprint where they're throwing themselves at the finish line. That's what Paul says.
Seeing Through God's Eyes
A similar passage for me in terms of really bringing all this in perspective, I'll give you two of them. Isaiah 55:8-9, where God says, "My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways, my thoughts are higher than yours, different than yours." So I want to begin to see everything around me as Christ sees it. I want to see the world, the values.
Now it's time to vote. It's really simple. Does the Bible speak to that? I think so. I think the Bible says I should cast a ballot in line with the values that Jesus would have, that the Bible teaches.
The Power of Therefore
Romans chapter 12, verse 1 and 2, it's one of those therefores. So let's make this, here's the big point, is that all the Christian imperatives, so everything that the Bible tells you to do are a result of the therefores. Priority living is a great example. I will meet people and they'll say, I'm thinking about coming to your thing, they mean this, but I want to clean up my act first. Okay, so we'll see it in the context of church. I'm thinking about getting back into church, but I want to clean up my act first. That's classic religion.
Classic religion says, I need to do something. Biblical Christianity is to say, no, Jesus does it all. Now because He's done that, He says to you, now you do this, don't do this, do this. So in not all of Paul's books, but in many of them, you'll find what I call that pivot, usually about halfway in the book. So you have Ephesians 1, 2, and 3, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, gets to verse or chapter 4, "Therefore walk in a manner worthy of your calling," because all that's true, live this way.
Well in Romans, there are 11 chapters of solid doctrine. We're going to be teaching the book of Romans at church next year. I'm really excited about it. He gets to chapter 12, he says therefore, because all of that's true, here's what I want, don't you be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Don't Let the World Squeeze You
Making some of the paraphrases, I think it's the Living Bible that says, "Don't copy the behavior of the world." The Phillips paraphrase says, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold." Eugene Peterson, in his translation, paraphrase The Message, writes this, "Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God and you'll be changed from the inside out."
So now there's this change that takes place. James asked the question, in James chapter 2 verse 14, okay, "Can this faith without works save you?" So that becomes the gut of everything. Can that faith without
works save you? Here's what James is not saying. Luther hated the book of James because he felt it could easily be misunderstood to say that works were essential to your salvation. That's not it. That's religion.
I have, over the years, sat with dozens and dozens and dozens of priests and pastors and all sorts of people, and I will always come back to this: tell me about salvation. Tell me about what it means. Even when they say, "Well Jesus died for us," they would not say "Jesus died for us, and we have to believe that." There's always an "and"—and I have to do that.
I remember I had a three-hour meeting with a Mormon guy, and I don't remember what his position was in the church, but at the end he said, "You know what's really interesting is, we're saying the same thing, we're just saying it a little bit differently." I said, "What's really scary is, we're saying radically different things and they sound the same, and you have to know where to push, and it has to be about the works." So those are the conversations you have a lot.
I mean I was born and raised Catholic—grade school, high school, college—and when I talked to my friends, in fact, two of the guys I went to school with, one's a Monsignor now in the state of Illinois, the other just was promoted to a bishop in the state of Indiana. Great guys. We used to hang out together. When you push them, they will go. I remember sitting in Washington DC, talking to one of them, and he said, "Tom, this is what we've always believed," and I said, "Maybe, I guess, I must have been the only guy in the whole class that never heard it." I never heard that. I never heard "believe and you'll be saved." I heard "believe and you got a bunch of other stuff to do." I never heard just believe and I'm saved by grace through faith. I never heard that.
And he said, "Well, that's what we were taught. That's what I teach." I said, "Well, I don't think it's consistent with your church, because your church has to be offering masses for people's souls." There's nothing I can do. I'm saved by grace through faith. There's nothing I can do. You see that? So you push, and push, and push, but now we say Jesus is Lord, now the works kick in. Now I ought to see it.
The Attitude of Christ
Well, I want to go to this passage that we have before us. It's Philippians chapter 3, but go back to chapter 2 verse 5. I've been saying a lot lately, and this is key, this is huge. Everything can't be huge, but I'm making it all huge, but chapter 2 verse 5 is really huge. Paul says, "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus." Philippians 2:5. Some will say "have the mind in you that was also in Christ."
If you take that word "mind" or "attitude," attitude according to Webster's is a mindset by which I evaluate or direct my life. So have this attitude in you, this mindset, this compass that was in Christ. And then he goes on to tell us what that attitude was, and we come back again to this idea of humility.
"Although He existed in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in a likeness of men, He was found in the appearance of man, He humbled Himself." And again, let me drive this home because this is gigantic. When Paul's looking to express the idea of humility, there is no Greek word or Latin word for that. He's got to invent one, create one. That's how contrary it is to our thinking.
So along comes Paul and he said, "I want you to think like Jesus." And the key ingredient in that whole thing, the thing that's going to tie it all together, without it, it isn't going to happen, the thing is going to be humility. So Paul is saying, "That's what I want you to get in your mind."
Paul's Religious Resume
So Paul goes on then to Philippians chapter 3, and Paul's talking about, beginning in verse 4, "If anybody can believe in religion, it's me." And then he lists all the things, he lists his pedigree, his resume, he talks about the position that as it relates to the Christian movement, as a Pharisee. Paul says, "I wasn't neutral on this, I was one who persecuted the church."
So Paul takes all of that together and he says, verse 7 of Philippians 3, "Whatever things were gained to me, those things I count as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the, here it is, surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus." There's an intimacy there. There's not "know about Him," it's not just communicating with God, it's communion with God.
He's saying, "Here's what I want," verse 10, "that I might know Him, Jesus, and the power of His resurrection." I want to know that power. I don't want to just make this an academic study, I don't want to be able to run a category on Jeopardy about Jesus, I want to know Him in a personal way, so it'll transform my life.
The Process of Becoming
Now let's look at verse 12, 13, 14, and kind of just pull it apart. Here you go: "Not that I've already obtained it." Paul introduces an idea here that completely separates us from God. We are becoming, growing, learning. God is—that's what He says, "I am."
"I haven't already obtained it, nor have I become perfect." That word "perfect" means mature. It strikes me that Paul has an accurate view of who he really is.
I had never in my life watched Dancing with the Stars. Nothing against it, it's on Monday night, there's football on, it just seems like there's something—not even a higher or better news, just sleeping seems more valuable to me. So one night, Susan said to me, "Will you watch Dancing with the Stars with me?" And I said, "No, I don't want to watch it. Pamela Anderson's been voted off, why would I watch it anymore?"
She said, "Will you watch Dancing with the Stars?" I said, "No." And then she said, and this was transformational, she said, "I watch football with you." And I said, "But you like football." And she said, "No, I love you and I want to be with you."
with you, so I watch football. And if I'm going to be around you on Saturday, starts in the morning at 6:45, goes till the gun goes off in Hawaii at 10:30 or 11 or 12 or whatever, if I want to be with you, I have to like it. And it literally changed. I watched every minute of Dancing with the Stars from then until Susan died. Every minute.
Well, the show I'd never seen was American Idol. So my daughter's over, she said, let's watch American Idol. I said, seriously, I just nodded up. I mean, I'm killing myself on this Dancing with the Stars thing. She said, oh, you'll like it because they're not in LA or whatever yet. They're still, you know, calling people out.
So there's this guy. So she's, I said, all right. So she turns it on. And they're talking to this lady. It's a mom. It looked like many of you. And she said, you know, my son, Jacob, Jacob is, we're from Mississippi, not Tupelo, but somewhere. And my son, Jacob is, he's Elvis. He's the reincarnation of Elvis. He is Elvis. He sings at every wedding, every gathering, every time there's a parade, he's on a float singing. He sings everywhere.
So she turned to this guy. And he said, you know, I just am. It's a burden. You know, I mean, I'm Elvis. And I thought, oh, wow. And he got up. And I'm telling you, he was, you know this, right? He was what? Awful. Awful. He was awful. And then, well, you don't know anything, and Randy doesn't know anything, and none of you people know anything.
The Challenge of Self-Perception
It's very hard to get an accurate view of yourself. The one person I guarantee you I will give the benefit of the doubt is me. So Paul's got it here. I'm not there. Our heart is wicked.
In every relationship, at every moment, I'm either ministering to the other person or manipulating them. One of the two. If I look at Sandy, and I say, you look beautiful tonight, I can't even sort out my feelings to go, am I really trying to encourage her and say, that's really a pretty dress? You really look good? Or am I trying to perhaps manipulate her for some, who would know what sort of reason might be?
But Paul said, here you go. I'm in this process, and I've already told you to do it, and I don't have it done, but I'm at least on the road to have the mind in me that's also in Christ, that key ingredient of humility.
The Battle Between Humility and Pride
Now, the other side of that would be pride. C.S. Lewis writes about it in Mere Christianity, and he defines pride this way. Pride is a complete anti-God state of mind. So in its simplest forms, I don't even know if this is accurate, humility is saying, what about you? Pride is saying, what about me?
C.S. Lewis has a great line in there too, where he says, it was through pride that Lucifer became the devil. There's the struggle. That's why we try to teach you to push yourself, to ask why.
Why would I do that? Why did I just lie about that? When you said to me, did you get my email, and I did get it, I just didn't bother, it was very uninspiring, and I found no drive to try to return it, why would I say, no, I didn't get it? Well, because you know guys in my job are supposed to get emails and care more about you than me. Why do you do that? Why did you just tell that lie? Why did you leave that shopping cart there? Why did you run that light? Why did you not tell the truth?
Paul says, I have this accurate view of myself. I'm not already there. Man, I'm striving. That's what he says now. He says, I press on. There's a purposefulness there.
Understanding Purpose vs. Goals
Every time I use the word purposeful or purpose, I feel like I owe Rick Warren 10 bucks, like he coined the word, but there is this purpose and goals. I was never much for this, so I'm going to confess up front. My goal in business was to really never have a goal, but the goals are these short-term measurable attainable steps. A purpose is something that's long-term, maybe impossible to ever measure, never attained, but it extends beyond life and really begins to define those goals in my life.
So let me give you an example. My purpose may be to know God, to be holy. My goal might be to read through the Bible in a year. Now here's what happens in life, is you see people that are just dinging off their goals. They're meeting these goals, they're exceeding in these goals, but they're very frustrated.
This is where I need graphics. Is if this is my purpose, I can have all this purpose in my life, but I can have goals that don't advance that purpose. I can have goals that are contradictory goals. Years ago, I was challenged to write a purpose statement, and I wrote like a paragraph, and they just browbeat you down to a sentence. So here's what I came up with, and what I did was take buzzwords in my life and try to put them in a sentence. To mature in my faith and develop a lifestyle resulting in others coming to Christ and growing in Him. So the key words for me were mature, and lifestyle, evangelism, is to develop that lifestyle.
Living Out Our Values
We're in a pastor's meeting Tuesday, so I'm trying to think, we have the Gilbert Campus staff there. So there's about a dozen guys in the room, and we're talking about giving, and one of the criticisms that I've had that's been leveled against me for like 20 years is I don't talk enough about money. So I thought, all right, I'll talk with the staff about money, and challenging and saying, we're asking people to live in a certain way, are we living that way? And what are the things that stop us?
Especially, I found a new book, I gave it to Sandy to scan, I got a feeling it's really a good book, it's called Cleaning House. Written by a lady who's driving her kids to school one day, and the 14-year-old's talking about how when he's 16, he'll need a car like that one, and I can't remember, it was a Ferrari or something, and he was serious, he wasn't blinking, he was, I kind of expect this. And all of a sudden, she stopped and she said, here, I've got these four kids, where did they get that sense that they were entitled to that? And so the book is about the next 12 months of weaning her
kids, we'd say us too, from a sense of entitlement. Well, all of a sudden, that entitlement develops a lifestyle. I sound like a crotchety old man here. It stuns me that I hear how bad the economy is, but I got to wait in line at a restaurant.
Sandy's birthday was Saturday, so Friday night, some people had given us some gift certificates, so we went to a place for dinner, but I would never go if I had to pay for it. And it's really expensive. I got a little bit of piece of meat that I guess was really good, and some little bitty shrimps. They all looked lonely on that. They looked like they needed gravy and a bunch of other stuff with them. And this bill came, and I'm just looking at it, and I said to Sandy, did you have $150 worth of fun on that deal? And I said, look, this place is jammed. They can't all have gift certificates.
I watch the young kids from our church. I've been openly critical with them. You see the mom and the dad and three kids going into a place for breakfast, and I know it's $35 or $40. At the same time, you're telling me you don't have any money. So there's a lifestyle. And that's really hard to teach, because it's going to be very different for each person. And there's a maturity.
The Call to Focus
There's this idea, Paul's saying this, and here's what I want to do. I press on. I've developed a lifestyle. 2 Timothy 2, verse 4, no soldier in active duty entangles themselves in the affairs of everyday life. What are the things that are going to entangle me? Well, one of them is going to be to crank up a lifestyle that I can't support, or drives me into all these areas.
So here are my goals. I want to grow closer to Christ. I would put it in the idea of, I don't regard myself as having laid hold of it yet. This one thing I do, it's this idea of focus.
Here would be my conclusion. I don't know that it's accurate. For some reason, don't know what, assuming you can sleep in a normal sleep pattern, for whatever reason, you got up, some of you did your hair, some of you were strategic in what you wore, and you got here this morning at an early hour, for some reason. And some of it must have to do with either somebody else conducting this with breakfast, or you felt some sort of either deficiency or need.
And Paul's saying, listen, I can tell you what that need is. It's to have that right relationship with the Creator God of the universe, to come to that moment of salvation. And that's not the end of the journey, that's the beginning of the journey. Now Paul's describing it. There's a level of frustration. This is the super saint, he's saying, I don't have it figured out. This one thing I do, it's the law of focus. It begins to define everything else.
The Challenge of Multiple Goals
So go back to goals. I find guys all the time, and I made a list. Here's what I'll hear. Meet with a guy. Here's what I'm going to work on, he'll say. I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good parent. I need to spend time with business. The market's really hard. I want to increase my business. I want to nurture my family, not just this family, my extended family. My handicap's 15, I want to get it to five. My parents are getting old, it's going to demand some time. I need to take care of myself, not just intellectually, I need to keep reading and growing, but physically as well. I want to be involved in the things of God.
Let me help you out here, pal. That's going to be a Mount Everest to climb. That's a really hard thing to be able to do. What I need to do is to take everything and now see Christ in the midst of all the things that I'm about.
So that passage in 2 Timothy chapter 2, Paul uses the imagery of a soldier, an athlete, and a farmer. I'm disentangled, I'm disciplined, I work hard.
The Ministry Misconception
I was telling somebody the other day, every day, there's not a day that goes by when I'm not out meeting with guys or in an environment like this where I don't have at least one guy, between the age of 45 and 55, who's saying to me, I'm tired of what I'm doing, I want to do something else. When it was easy to make a couple hundred grand a year, nobody was tired. Now you've got to work hard to make 75, everybody's tired. That's interesting.
God's calling people into the ministry at a record pace right now. I'm a little suspicious, but I want to do something else. And the phrase that will often come is this. I'm looking to get into the full-time ministry. And we have to recalibrate that thought.
That's the campaign I've been on for maybe 10 years, apparently unsuccessfully, and will be the driving force, really, I think, through the end of my career in life, is to say, you've got to understand, when you're a mom at home, changing a diaper, that's full-time ministry. When you walk into the office today, and they say, hey, how was your day? Good, good, good. I went to that thing this morning. What do you mean that thing? That deal, that meeting, that, and ultimately you go, well, it's like a Bible study.
The minute you say that, and we'll talk about this next week, you're teeing yourself up for everybody to begin to scrutinize you. And you have to take whatever this is into the office. If it isn't making that move to the office, to the home, to the club, to the golf course, wherever, if it's not making that move, then it's just simply not real.
The Power of Focus
There has to be this idea of focus in a world that's distracting me. I taught, I did an NFL conference a few years ago, and about the third row back, Mike Singletary was there. Now, for those of you that know Mike Singletary, you participate at this point, if I say Mike Singletary, what comes to your mind? His eyes.
And he brought that level, I mean, I got up there, and it was like, I was afraid he was going to hit me. It was like, everywhere I went. I would say something that was extraordinarily funny, and he would, huh, I mean, that's what I got. Well, Saturday night he left, Sunday morning, he had an engagement for Sunday, Sunday morning I'm talking to his wife, and she said,
Mike really enjoyed you. I said, "Well, that's nice. I wouldn't have known it." I said, "What do you mean?" I said, "It's just that scowl." Here's what she said: "He's intense." He's intense, isn't he? Yeah, he is. It's that idea of focus. If you and I are chatting and people are walking in, my eyes are all over the place. He's focused.
What's that target? He said, "And I press on." He's in verse 13: "I don't regard myself as having laid hold of it yet. There's one thing that I do." Paul says, "I preach Christ and Christ crucified." It's not that he didn't have a message on husband-wife relationship. He's just saying that cross affects everything that I do.
Forgetting What Lies Behind
"That's sinful and everything, and I forget what lies behind." When Paul talks about the future and the past, typically when he talks about the future, he's talking about heaven, and when he talks about the past, he's talking about that moment of conversion.
I was with somebody the other day, and this sounds terrible, but the chance of them hearing this is zero. "I can't forgive myself. I can't forgive myself." Well, you didn't sin against yourself; you sinned against God. If you've come to Christ in repentance and faith, He's forgiven you. This is not about you forgiving Him—you're forgiven.
Paul said, "I forget what lies behind." Let me remind you, this is a guy who's wiping out the church, putting people in jail. Likely, if not personally—we know that at Stephen's stoning, Paul's the one who's, in a sense, kind of supervising it. Paul's got all that stuff back there too. I think it's because we're so selfish that even if we're talking about our own sin, at least we're talking about us.
So here I am, dragging through life. Here's all this stuff in my past. I was just home—I was back in Iowa for like, whatever it was, 10 days. Everywhere I go, I'm thinking, "I remember doing that there. I remember doing that there." I can get pulled into that pretty quickly and go, "There's a lot of yucky stuff there," but I'm forgiven.
So here you are, you're dragging around this ball and chain. Along comes real forgiveness from God. He cuts that ball and chain loose, and then you reach over and pick it up and carry it around with you. It's just stupid. It makes no sense, but at least we're talking about me. He said, "No, I forget what lies behind."
The True Focus of Heaven
When he talks about the future, he talks about heaven. But when we talk about heaven, that needs perspective. If I say to you "heaven," just fire off stuff that comes into your mind. Heaven, eternal life, peace. We did a staff meeting the other day, so I'm listening to the staff: "No more tears, no more pain." Hey, I'm up for that one. But the key thing—and here's how bad I'm afraid I am—the key thing to heaven is the presence of Jesus. It's not the absence of this; it's the presence of Jesus.
I have to ask myself, and I do all the time: would I take heaven if I get heaven without Jesus, just to get rid of all this, and you, and everything that goes with it? Max Lucado writes this: "Unhappiness on earth cultivates a hunger for heaven. By gracing us with a deep dissatisfaction, God holds our attention. The only tragedy then is to be satisfied prematurely."
That's where a lot of us are—to settle for earth and to be content in a strange land. We're not happy here because we're not home here. First Peter 2:11: we're like foreigners, or strangers, aliens in this world. You'll never be completely happy on earth because you weren't made for earth. You'll have moments of joy, you'll catch a glimpse of life, you'll know moments—maybe even days—of peace, but they simply don't compare with the happiness that lies ahead.
Glimpses of Glory
Sandy and I are in Iowa City. We didn't have tickets for the games. I sent an email to a friend who I know is involved with the university. We ended up with two tickets on the 50-yard line—I'm on one side, she's on the other. We're in the outdoor stadium, and the leaves are changing. I said to Sandy, "It just can't get any better than this. It can't. It isn't going to get any better than this."
He said, "Boy, you know what? That's going to fade." And the minute they kick it off, it fades. We're not very good. The minute they kick it off, it fades, but there's that moment.
He said, "Listen, I want you to be conscious of that union with Jesus, but don't become so heavenly minded you're no earthly good. Keep your mind focused on this: reaching forward to what lies behind, reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." The hope that we have in Christ.
The Real Hope of the World
What's the hope of the world? Well, it's not the United States of America. Great place, greatest ever. I'm a big American guy, love it. But the hope—the eternal hope—is Jesus.
So here's the bottom line: God saved you for a reason beyond getting to heaven, and it has something to do with wherever He's placed you today—where you work, where you live. God calls us to live in an extraordinary way.
Turning the World Right Side Up
One last scene. Paul and Silas are coming in Acts 17, coming into a new town, and there's the opposition they have everywhere. This is from the New Living paraphrase translation. The Jewish leaders are out looking for Paul and Silas; they can't find them. They go to the home where they think they're staying. They drag out Jason—it's his house—and some of the other believers. They took him to the city council. Here's what they said: "Paul and Silas have turned the rest of the world upside down, and now they're here disturbing our city."
Some sense of that is what the people around you should be saying. Not that you turn the world upside down, but you turn the world right side up. Genesis 3 turned everything upside down. God created—this was His design. Sin comes into the world; now everything's distorted. From now until Jesus comes again, we're in the process, gradually, never perfectly, of turning back the effects of the fall.
So it's integration.
The Call to Integration
Don't fall into that trap of saying, "My faith is deeply private." No, it's deeply personal, but it's not private. When you go to the marketplace, at the forefront of this is: you need Jesus.
We're going to take the next two weeks and talk about that. It's actually two things that shouldn't be separated, but they will be for our discussion. It's the call to make the invisible God visible, and then to speak the truth boldly.
Father, take those truths, drive them deep in us, change our lives, give us a desire to serve You and You alone, soften our hearts toward You, give us a sense of focus, reason, purpose. God, will You do that in our life? For the rest of our life, we ask it in Christ's name, amen.