Control

Tom Shrader continues His life management series by examining the concept of control - retaining authority over your time, energy, and resources to progress toward your objectives rather than someone else's. Using Jesus as the model, He identifies seven areas where believers must exercise deliberate discipline: controlling appetites, resisting public acclaim, scheduling rest, choosing companions wisely, rejecting harmful advancement, avoiding image-driven decisions, and prioritizing the important over the urgent.

“Most of you will spend more time planning your vacation than you will the rest of your life.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Life Management (2001)

Recorded: November 01, 2001

Duration: 41 min

Themes: control, discipline, time management, priorities, boundaries, excellence, purpose, stewardship, overwhelmed professional, busy parent, struggling with priorities, new believer, young adult, business leader, time management struggles, seeking life balance

Scripture: Matthew 4:1-4, Mark 1:35-38, Mark 6:30-32, Mark 5:18-20, Luke 6:12-16, John 6:15, John 7:1-10, John 11:1-44, 1 John 2:16, Genesis 3

Theological Themes: discipleship, following christ, christian maturity, spiritual growth, biblical leadership, servant leadership, sanctification, becoming holy

Handout Link

Full Transcript

We'll get at this today. Today's Session 3. I have never done a series like this. There are missing tapes. This is a 12-session series of which I have 7 sessions. So, I have nothing to tell you. I don't know what to tell you. I'm listening to a tape the other day that talks about all 12 sessions and there are just no tapes. So, we'll do what we can.

My point there is, I think this is 7 weeks today, week 3. Let me take the time to make sure we remember. We do a little, since it's a series, try a little summary each week, but make sure we're on the same page here.

The Life Management Challenge

What we're talking about is life management and the premise is this, that some of you are extraordinary. In fact, you've even been trained to be and are efficient at certain things, in areas of giftedness. God's given you the ability that if you've got a company that's in trouble, you've got the expertise to turn it around. Or you are an R&D person and man, you get in those areas and you've got it made. Or sales is your deal and you can just take something.

And so, we see people who are successful in many areas of life, but not all of them. We see people for whom life is coming together at work, falling apart at home, or in place at home and struggling at work. Our desire here today and through this series is to try to get to a point where you're looking at your life, not in segments, but in totality. And when somebody says, how are you doing? You can say, I'm really doing well.

Now, let me tell you the problem with that, because I get this all the time, and I hate this. So, if you're one of these people that do this to me, I just know how much I hate this. How are you doing? And I'll say, I'm doing great. No, how are you really doing? Oh, I can't stand that. You don't know me well enough for me to tell you how I'm really doing. I'm doing fine, okay?

But you know what? That's a comment on how screwed up people are, because we assume if you don't have problems, you're lying. We're so taken off guard by the fact that some people can be okay. Well, we want you to be okay.

Review: Purpose and Excellence

So, we're talking about today control. Here's what we've talked about. We've talked about purpose. We said it's important for you to understand why you do what you do. And we talked about excellence. And we said excellence is really living up to the potential God's given you.

So, I can get a student who's a 2.5 student, and they could be doing excellent, because that's all the bullets they've got in their gun. That's just all they're ever going to be able to do. Or I can get a student who's a 3.5, and the kid's just coasting. So, when we talk about excellence, what we're talking about is understanding God gave you some abilities and a background, and He wants you to use them.

Jesus as Our Role Model

Our role model, as we work our way through this, is Jesus. And I really have to... I want to go out of my way. So, I'll say it at the beginning of every session. When we say Jesus is your role model, what we're saying is this. We believe that He's fully God and fully man. And that most of us are going to fall on one side that gets Him out of balance.

We're either going to emphasize His humanity at the expense of His deity, or, at least people I hang with, more on the other side, they emphasize His deity at the expense of His humanity. When we say Jesus is your role model, we're not advocating that you model His deity. He walked on water, you're not going to. He healed the lame, you aren't going to.

We're not advocating modeling His deity, we're advocating looking at the humanity of Christ. Looking at the situations that He's in, and see how He responds. And see if, perhaps, there's a pattern there that is good for us to look at and to model.

Defining Control

We're talking about control, you've got the definition there in your outline. Here's what we're using anyway. Retaining authority over your time and your energy and your resources to progress toward your objectives rather than someone else's. Here's what we're talking about.

And again, I know, because we've done the lessons, God's in control. There's a sense in which you can't control the scope of this day. We've got this anthrax thing we can't even see, and in some instances we have a nation paralyzed and spending billions and billions of dollars over this thing we can't even see. Which is fine, that's not a criticism.

My point is, there's this little thing we can't even see that takes us down like this, individually, maybe even corporately. And we're thinking we've got control. There's certain things over which God has control. What we're saying to you is, over those things that you can control, control them.

Living Deliberately

That implies two things. Here's the first one. That you live deliberately. That you're planning your life.

Two years ago, at church, we had an awful Christmas party, staff Christmas party. It was terrible. It was just awful. What made it awful? Everything made it awful. It was awful. So we're driving home, and I said to Susan, I'm going to take control of the Christmas party. She said, oh, Tom, think about that now. Think it through. And I said, I thought it through. I thought it through when I was there and it was awful. I'm going to be in charge of next year's Christmas party.

I said, why do you have a problem with that? And she said, well, because I'll end up doing it all. I'll end up doing everything. So I pointed out again to her, you don't know me very well.

So anyway, last year's Christmas party was absolutely incredible. It was at the end of, and the staff just loved it. They went nuts. The problem was, and I did it all. Well, that's not true. I had two ladies that did all the work, but I was the brains behind the organization. I had two gals that really did it, and they did it all. I was scheming, and we had plans, and it was fun.

But we're driving home, and Susan said, well, you don't seem very happy. I said, Susan, what am I do next year? I just shot all the ideas I had in one year on this thing. So this year we did

Know Your Enemy's Playbook

The other night we had this wonderful Christmas party at our house. We had planned it for weeks, and Susie came in, and Susan came in, and we did some stuff. We came up with all these arrangements, and it's always a secret. Don't tell them. I can't let them know. That's part of the anticipation.

It occurred to me the other day that we spend a lot of time planning something like a Christmas party or a fishing trip. This is an indictment, by the way. Most of you will spend more time planning your vacation than you will the rest of your life. Isn't that silly?

If I'm going to have control of my life, I've got to live deliberately. There has to be a scheme. It has to be thoughtful. Not only do I have to be deliberate, I have to be disciplined. It doesn't do you any good to have this magnificent plan if you never execute it. It doesn't do you any good to buy a membership to the gym and never go. Somehow here, I've got to marry those things together. I've got to be deliberate. I've got to have a plan, and I've got to have discipline.

Taking Inventory of Your Life

What we're saying to you is, let's take a look at some of these things that will pull you off your game. They were instances that we see in Christ's life. What became very clear to me is that what we're really asking you to do is almost an inventory of your life. To kind of look at these things on a scale, maybe a 1 to 10. One being, it's a huge issue in my life, and I don't have it under control. Ten being, I've got that one knocked, and away we go. And there's seven of them.

Control Your Appetites

The first really practical thing: Keep your appetites away from driving your life. The instance you have in front of you is Matthew chapter 4. Jesus was led away by the Spirit into the desert and tempted by the devil.

Let me give you a little background. Jesus has launched this public ministry. He's been baptized. He now goes in for 40 days and 40 nights into the desert. And He's tempted by the devil.

Every time we come to this idea of the devil, I think I make the same point. But it's because, like many things, we never get it exactly right. We have a whole group of people that says there's no such thing as the devil. He doesn't even exist. He's an evil force, whatever. You got another group of people over here that are saying, well, the devil's in the midst of everything.

My favorite story is, one night I've taken the speaking thing at this church, and it's a little loose for me, the church. It's brother this and sister that and a lot of chatter going on. So it's time for me, and they said, "You know, Brother Tom's got a message for us tonight. Brother Tom's in there, and Brother Tom's going to really give it to us. Brother Tom's going to do this." "Okay, help me welcome Brother Tom." And I get up, and I start to speak, and the sound system's not working.

The guy gets up, and he said, "Well, hang on here. The devil's really attacking. Brother Tom must have something powerful to say. The devil's really attacking us tonight in this sound system." And I'm saying, "No, you just bought cheap junk. You bought tubes. We don't use tubes anymore. It's a little more sophisticated than that."

Understanding Satan's Limitations and Strategy

Let's make sure we don't do this. The devil isn't God. He's not all-powerful and all-knowing, and he's not omnipresent. But he's probably a lot stronger than you. And you better understand that.

The other thing about him that's kind of interesting is he doesn't surprise you much. This passage in Matthew 4, I'll give you a little assignment. And I'll tell you what, it'll be fascinating if you'll do it. If you take what John says, the world comes at us with the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. What I've always considered that is kind of the devil's standard operating procedure. Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, boastful pride of life.

If you go back to Genesis 3, that's what he did. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, boastful pride of life. Look at the apple. It was appealing. Look at the apple. Be good for food. Look at the apple. Make you like God. How confident is he in this system? If you go to Matthew 4 and you see this temptation of Jesus, you will see that the devil uses the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.

The Scout Team Advantage

Now, you would think that would give you a big advantage. In high school, my senior year, I played quarterback. When I say played quarterback, it's an exaggeration. That was the position that I was given. I never played it much in a game because I wasn't very good. I'm just not, I wasn't made for that. And I wasn't very good at it.

But what I did do and a function that I seemed to fulfill was to run all week the scout team, which was the team where we're running the offense that the team we'll play next week is going to run. We're running against our first team defense. Well, we would periodically, because we had some pretty good athletes—me not being one of them—we had some pretty good athletes on that second team. So it was not unusual for us to successfully run a play.

There's the worst thing that could ever happen. Take a snap, take a couple step back, hand off, let this go, and see our guy run. And then we would hear these words. These are the words you never wanted to hear: "Run it again." Because now we got 11 guys on the other side who are pretty confident where we're going. And the poor guy that just ran the ball would come back and he'd just go, "Oh." So now we go, here we are, and we give him that ball, he'd come around and there's four guys right there. How come they got it that second time? Well, knowing the play was a big advantage.

It would seem to me in football, if I knew the play they were going to run, it's an advantage. I'm telling you the play Satan's going to run. It's either going to be lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, or boastful pride of life. That's all he's got in the playbook. That's what he's going to bring at you.

leads them away. None of this, by the way, is the point. He leads them away. After 40 days and 40 nights, it says, Jesus was hungry. And the tempter came to him and said, "If you're the Son of God, take these stones and have them become bread." And Jesus said, "It's written, man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."

Significant in that is Jesus is hungry. There's nothing wrong, I don't think, with Jesus turning these stones into bread to meet His hunger. But the problem was, in the context of the temptation, all of a sudden, He would have been yielding here to Satan. He's hungry. It's a real hunger.

We had a guy in one of the studies who did a 40-day fast. And I didn't hear about it until the end. And this may be the dumbest single question I've ever asked. I said to him, "Did you get hungry?" Stupid. And he said, "Tom, I was hungry two hours into this." And then we talked about it and away we went. Jesus is hungry, but He doesn't let His appetites overrule what He knows, in this instance, to be what God would have Him do.

Insulate Yourself from the Perfume of Public Acclaim

Here's the second thing. Insulate yourself—I like the phrase—from the perfume of public acclaim. Early, early in the morning, while it's still dark, Jesus got up and left the house. And He went off to a solitary place and He prayed. And Simon and his companions go looking for Him. And they found Him. And they said, "Everybody's looking for you." And Jesus said, "Let us go somewhere else, to a nearby village, so I can preach there. That's why I've come."

Here's what they said. "Jesus, you're really moving the people right here. People are really excited about it. We'll see how excited they were in a bit. They're really excited about it. Let's go back." And Jesus says, "No, let's get out of here." Just because there's public clamor and people are saying, "You're really something," that's no reason to stay.

I wrote this—and I presume, in fact, I'm absolutely positive that I got this from somebody else, but I don't know who—it said, "Those who are resolved to please God must not be afraid to displease any man." If my desire is to please God, I have to understand that there are going to be instances where I'm going to have to do things that will make people unhappy.

Watch out for this public clamor. It's Winston Churchill, and they're saying, "We've got to have you. We've got to have you." In times of war, they turned to Churchill. Twice, when the war was over, they voted him out of office. Lincoln—you have some of the greatest presidents now, and they throw Lincoln up there. Go back and read what the newspapers and the politicians were saying about Lincoln before he took the bullet. Six months ago, Rudy Giuliani's popularity ratings in New York were under 50%. You all were booing Matt Williams three weeks ago, and now he hits a home run, and wow. Yeah, well, he can't do it every time.

But here's the ultimate flip-flop. One week, Jesus comes into town, and they say, "Hosanna, Hosanna." And one week later, they say, "Crucify Him, crucify Him." You better be careful. When people—and I like our phrase in this instance—the perfume of public acclaim, the applause that comes, the recognition that comes, be careful.

Interject Sufficient Time to Rest and Relax

Here's the third thing. Interject into your schedule sufficient time to rest and relax. Mark 6, the apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to Him all that they'd done and all they'd taught. Let me give you, again, the setting here. These guys had just been sent out two by two, and they'd seen God do some spectacular things. And now, Jesus has them all together, and can you imagine what that had to be like?

I've got a group I meet on Tuesday with a couple of our interns and some of our guys that are really just learning and starting to learn how to preach and teach. And it's so fun to be in that room, because the enthusiasm level is so high. And they'll say, "I did this last week, I tried this, I moved this over here, we came down here, it's incredible." That had to be this whole thing that's going on. These guys are jacked.

And then, because so many people were coming and going, they didn't even have a chance to eat, Jesus said—Jesus said, "Come with me, by yourselves, to a quiet place, and get some rest." You need to rest. If you're one of these idiots that say, "I haven't had a vacation in five years," you're foolish.

And I know the trap, because here's the trap. The trap is, listen, business has never been like it is now. You've got to make hay while the sun's shining. Business is so good right now, you've got to stay on top of it. But then when it gets bad, then you're saying, "You know what, it's so tough, I've got to double my efforts now," because there's no end to this thing. And here's the other lie: it's that I'll get a long weekend.

Wall Street Journal—that always settles it, once you say the Wall Street Journal. But the Wall Street Journal reported, in several studies that they did, that basically the long weekend was of little value. That you need to get away for blocks of time, and you need to rest.

What you're going to see today—and now I'm going to sound like Fiddler on the Roof the rest of the day—is on the other hand. Because you've got these things. These things just absolutely hang here in balance. Some of you have become so serious, you need to get a little fun. You need a yuck. Your little yuck meter is just down here at zero, and you need some fun. There's nothing wrong with having fun.

Here you go. There's nothing wrong with reading a book that has nothing to do with the Bible. Nothing to do with Jesus. It's okay. Now, on the other hand, some of you do nothing but have fun and yucks, and read books that are by Dave Barry. But the premise here is, in the midst of how busy they were, He didn't say, "We gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go." He said, "We need to get some rest."

Be Careful Who You Pick to Hang Out With

Here's a fourth thing. Be careful who you pick to hang out with. Two different settings. There's a man. He's a guy that's been demon-possessed.

He's in Mark 5:18. Jesus is getting in the boat, and the man who's been demon-possessed begs to go with Him. Jesus doesn't let him go. He says, "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord's done for you." On the other hand, Luke 6: "One of those days, Jesus went into the hills to pray and spent the night praying to God. When the morning came, He called His disciples to Him, and He chose 12 of them, of whom were His designated apostles."

Be Careful Who You Spend Time With

People, you've got some general things. Bad company corrupts good morals. You better be careful who you hang out with. We're talking not just who you associate with, especially if you became a Christian as an adult.

If you became a Christian as an adult, what you need to understand is that you're going to have people around you who don't share your values and don't share your faith. When you hang around with them, in all likelihood, they're going to get more of their lostness on you than you are of your righteousness on them. You need to be really careful here.

You need to be careful who you hang out with socially. Who are the people that you spend time with? Because all of a sudden, they've got just a little bit of a different spin on things. So when they say, "We're going to watch the ballgame," they mean we're going to watch the ballgame and have a beer. Any problem with that? I don't think biblically you've got a problem. I think if you want to have a beer, have a beer.

Here's the problem. One beer leads to another, leads to another, leads to extra innings. Now I've had quite a few beers. Now, all of a sudden, I'm driving home and I've got problems. I've got to be really careful with this stuff. You've got to be careful who you hang out with, who you socialize with.

Energy Drainers vs. Energy Givers

Let me give you this. You need to be careful who you extend your ministry time to. You've got two types of people: you've got people who drain you, and you've got people who surge you.

I was talking to a guy one day, and he said, "You know so-and-so," and I said, "I do." He said, "Do you ever spend any time with him?" I said, "Well, I've spent some time with him." He said, "Do you like him?" I said, "Well, I've spent some time with him." He said, "He's hard, isn't he?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "I'm not sure I can explain why."

He said, "I can explain how you feel. After you spend time with him and he walks away from you, you feel like a car who sat in the garage all night with the lights on, and you're trying to start the next morning." I thought, "You know what? That's exactly how I feel."

There are certain people that when I walk in, I hear the voicemail: "Tom, so-and-so, give me a call." And I'm thinking, "Oh, man, why does this voicemail work? I don't want to do this." There are other people—Larry was always that for me. Larry could call the minute I heard his voice: bam. Or I'd call him, and he'd say, "Hello." I'd say, "Doc." He'd go, "Tommy." It's like everything went away. Everything was okay. There are just certain people that energize us every time.

I've shared it in here. I know it's on old tapes. I know today's going to be a great day because I'm going to have breakfast with Larry. I just know that's the way it's going to be. You've got people in your life.

The Salt and Light Dilemma

Now, here's the dilemma. You're supposed to be salt and light. That means that you've got to take those draining people and those lost people, and you've got to spend time with them. However, on the other side, you have an obligation to keep yourself pure and keep yourself holy and keep yourself energized. This is hard stuff. This is what I go about with what we talked about at the beginning. You have to be deliberate even with the people that you spend time with.

I had this conversation yesterday with a guy. He's coming to me, and he's looking for a mentor, and he wants to know if I'll mentor him. I said, "No. Can't. I don't have the time. Too busy." He said, "That's a sad thing that you're too busy." I said, "Do you understand this, pal?" And I don't mean this arrogantly. "They're lining up wanting to spend time with me. I can't do it with all of them. I've got all this other stuff. I've got to do this. I've got to do a Sunday. I've got to do the other things. I've got a wife. I've got kids. I can't just say yes to everybody who wants to spend time."

So now you've got a real thing. Now you've got to figure out who you're going to spend your time with. Now you've got to look and say, "Where is the time going to be productive?" Jesus understands it.

Reject Advancements That Assure Your Decline

Three more things. Reject any advancement that will assure your decline. We talk about promotions. This is Jesus in John 6: "After the people saw the miraculous signs that Jesus did, they began to say, 'Surely this is the prophet who has come into the world.' Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make Him a king by force, withdrew into the hills."

Now, we think of job promotion moving up the ladder. Let's make sure we understand what just happened to Jesus. He's a carpenter. They want to make Him king. That's a big—we skipped a lot of steps along the way here in the transition. He's in the stock room. He's the CEO. Not every promotion and not every advancement in your life is necessarily good.

When the office calls and says, "You know what? We need somebody. We've got a mess in Billings. We need somebody to clean it up." My favorite story: I had a guy. He's a kid. He's probably 35 now. He's working with a big company. You know the company. Obviously a huge company. His father had worked for the company. The company just came to him and asked him to transfer out of here.

He said, "No, I've already moved seven times for the company." They said, "Seven times? We've got your record. You've been in Phoenix the whole time." He said, "No, I'm talking about when I was a kid. I've already moved seven times for this company. I'm not moving again. I'm not going to move again. My dad moved us—"

Seven schools. I'm not moving again. And I think that's okay. Sometimes the company is going to wake up and say, "All of a sudden, we've got a guy that's doing this job and doing it very well. He's not trying to get to here. He's not trying to go up to here. He's very good right here. And now on our organizational chart, we can put okay by this box and not have a constant turnover and flow there."

When I was at Coldwell Banker, I hadn't been there very long. One of the things they wanted to do is inspire you. They said, "Who in the industry did you look at and you really admire? Look at them. Who's where you want to be? Now, figure out what they do. Go talk to them. Have lunch with them. Ask them what they can do."

That's an exercise. Who are the guys that are where you want to be in your company? Typically what you're going to do is you're going to pick a guy that's at the top.

The Cost of Climbing the Corporate Ladder

Let me help you in this exercise. When you got that CEO, ask him how many of his kids' soccer games he saw this year. Ask him how many of the programs at school he saw. Virtually every program—now, again, I understand my life's a little unique—but virtually every program the girls were in, and I mean just things where they'd have some little throwaway line and something that they do in the middle of the week, we were there. Susan used to say, "Look around. You're the only dad at these things."

I understand I have very much a flex schedule. I got it. I'm not holding myself up. That's not the point. But I'd go to the basketball games, and dad would come rolling in in the third quarter if he got there at all. Now you got this situation where mom's got to get time off work to get there.

Look at the CEO guys. Read the stories. How are their families? Get the down and dirty in there. Not good, generally. I'll tell you, it's just me. I don't think it's worth that to move, to move, to move, to go up and up and up, to take more responsibility just so in most cases you can say you got it. There's nothing wrong with saying I'm satisfied.

Avoid Image-Based Decisions

Two more things, I think. Avoid all decisions that are made for you based on image. John 7: "Jesus went to Galilee purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were wanting to kill him. But when the Jewish festival of the tabernacles was near, Jesus said to his brothers, 'You ought to leave here and go to Judea so that the disciples may see the miracles that you do. No one who wants to be a public figure acts in secret. Since you're doing these things, show yourself to the world.' Jesus told them, 'I'm not yet going up to the feast.'"

Here's some stuff—image. Here's a whole industry. I think a lot about my dad. I think a lot about my dad and my mom in the context of the world they lived in. I remember one time asking my mom and dad—so my mom and dad are now 74, 76, in that area, so they grew up in that time frame that would be appropriate—I remember one time asking them, "When's the first time you ate in a restaurant?" They're stumped. All they could come up with was, "Well, the hotel used to have a place."

Ask the people you meet that are 75 or 80 years old when they first ate in a restaurant. They never did it. Now fast forward and ask the guy in the cube next to you, "When's the last time you ate at home?" There's a whole industry. There's a whole industry that my dad never had to deal with that's popped up that's huge.

The Image Consultant Industry

Here you go: image consultant. We're going to help you figure out what you need to do to be accurately perceived by the people around you. I guess that's all right. But you better be careful in this whole image thing, because it's going to cause you to do things you'd never do otherwise. An image for who?

Because it's easy. If I go out into the parking lot, I've made this point a thousand times, and there's a Lexus—here's a Lexus, and there's two of them—and I look at these. This one is about to be repossessed. This one's paid for in cash. It's the same to me.

Here's how I'll give you a classic example. I think this is helpful because it shows how dark I am, how sick I am. Again, I go back to the Coldwell Banker days. There was a time I was on the top ten list, and I hung in there pretty well. One year I was sixth or seventh. I thought, "How am I going to let everybody know I'm successful?" This is a dilemma, because I don't think it's appropriate for me to just Xerox this and just pass it out. That doesn't seem right. So how am I going to do that?

The Rolex Story

Well, what do successful people do? Again, any time I pick an object, clothing or whatever, there's nothing wrong with it. But to me, I thought, "Well, a Rolex. That's what I need. I need a Rolex." So I thought I better get a Rolex. Well, the problem is I have the wrists of a five-year-old girl. You put a Rolex on here and it just doesn't look good. That isn't going to work. The face is bigger than my wrist.

What am I going to do? I've got to figure this out. All of a sudden, it dawned on me: I'll get Susan a Rolex. Then when we're out and everybody's there and it's kind of quiet, I'll say, "Susan, what time is it?" And she can go like this, and everybody will know that I could afford to get her one. See how stupid this is? And that's a watch. It just goes on and on and on.

I'm talking to a dad the other day that's got almost 200 grand spent on college for his kids. I guess. I don't know. Why? I think the why answer to a lot of that is so I can sit around at the club and say, "Biff's at Brown." You get a great education over here at MCC, and you've got to go down to U for the rest of it. But at least you can get a good education. ASU, you can get it somewhere. See that?

Nothing wrong with Brown. There's nothing wrong with going to Brown. But why are we doing that? The more decisions you make based on image, I'll give you a great example. These weddings that I go to. These are beyond comprehension of how crazy they are. I'll tell you what makes me nervous is I've got two of them coming up of my own, and I can feel me getting sucked into this.

In the final analysis, it makes no sense. You're going to spend $40,000. Generally, it's pretty hard to do a wedding for $20,000 anymore. It's $20,000 to $25,000 to $30,000 for a wedding. I'm telling you, a cake drives me nuts. I'm at a wedding a long time ago. I said, "That's a beautiful cake." And they said, "Yes." I'm not really nosy, but I said, "I wonder, how much was that cake?" $1,200. Cake. It's a cake, man. They don't even eat that cake. They look at that cake. That's a looking cake. This is an eating cake. And why?

I'm not putting it down because some of you may be in the midst of that. I'm not criticizing. I'm just saying it is important to ask why. Why go and take student loans that equal $100,000 to get a job that pays $30,000? That doesn't make much sense. Why spend $40,000 on a wedding and then come and live in an apartment? The only reason is image gets in there. The thing is we're stuck. We make the decision and then we have the same thing all over again. "Well, you know, we did it for Jennifer. We've got to do it for her. We're going to have to do it again."

Never Let Urgency Upstage What's Important

Here's the last thing. Never let urgency upstage the thing that's important. This is a great story in John 11. There are so many applications out of John 11 because it's Lazarus, Jesus, Mary and Martha. Basically, the word comes to Jesus that Lazarus is sick and that Lazarus is going to die. "Can you come?" Jesus loves Lazarus very much. But Jesus doesn't go. In fact, He stays. He doesn't move.

He stays until he dies. He stays beyond his death. He stays until they buried him. He stays until he's been in the tomb and then He comes. The urgent was "hurry up and get here." But Jesus says, "No, there's something more important than that. If I hurry up and get there, we're going to miss what I've got for you, the demonstration of God's glory when I say 'Lazarus, come forth.'"

I don't think many offices anymore use the pink slips we used to get when someone called and then there were the boxes you checked. There was one box on there where all the letters were capitalized and it said "urgent." I would go and I'd come back and here would be five messages and they'd all be marked urgent. I remember one day calling this guy because I thought, "This name doesn't look familiar to me. Who is this?" And it's urgent. So I called and it was some guy who got my name who wanted to sell me a timeshare trip to something. I hung up. I said, "I don't think I'm interested," which is fine. Nothing wrong with timeshare. I thought, "You know what? That box needs more information. Urgent to who?" Because it wasn't urgent to me.

Everything Seems Urgent in Our Fast-Paced World

You live a life where everything is urgent. Everything is now. I'm the worst. I got spoiled now. Sarah wanted to show me something on her computer the other day. She found a site she wanted me to look at. It was loading and it probably took, I don't know, 15 seconds to load. We're about 10 seconds into it. I said, "I can't stand this. Can't you do something to speed this up?" She said, "Well, it's just the system it is right now."

McDonald's. I mean, I've been at McDonald's free since December 11th of 1997. But when I used to go to McDonald's, I never went through the drive-in because that killed me. I would order something and it wouldn't be ready. I would go in. I would look and I'd say, "I'll have two of the blue things." "What are those?" "Fish." Okay, I'm not a big fish eater, but two of the blue things. The worst possible thing that could happen to you is, as he punches in yours, this guy gets the blue things. Now you're there while they cook fish.

Here's how they marketed it, I thought. Fast food. Not good food. Not nutritious food. Not cheap food. Fast food. That's what I want. We now live life, and here's what happens. We've got all these urgent things. We forget the things that are really important.

What's Really Important Gets Pushed Aside

I have no clue what's on your schedule today. Your Palm Pilot, your day timer, whatever system you use. No clue what's on there. I would bet you've got way more urgent than you do really significant or important. Here's what's important: Where are you going to spend eternity? Where are the people in your office?

We haven't done this for a while. I'm telling you, we go to the office today. I remember doing this one time at Coldwell Banker where we had all these cubes. Go through the office and try to figure out who's going to heaven and who's going to hell. It's a very interesting exercise because you're walking around going, "Hell, hell, hell, heaven, hell, hell, hell, Methodist, hell, hell, hell." See, that's urgent.

I'm saying to you, you need to be deliberate about your life. You can't just have a purpose and say it's done. You have to have a purpose and then you have to implement it. As you implement it in your life, you have to have control. That means you have to be deliberate and you have to be disciplined. You need to do that.

You're going to waste your life. You're going to wake up in that final analysis and you're going to wake up with a bunch of regrets. And you've got no one to blame but yourself.

It's certainly not my fault. It's not God's fault. It's not the Holy Spirit's fault. It's your fault.

Pick up there next week. Father, help us see this truth and then give us the power to live a life that exhibits this. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.