Focus
Tom Shrader explores the principle of focus as essential for avoiding mediocrity in life. Using Jesus Christ as the model, he demonstrates how focus involves understanding your specific calling, staying on message with a clear purpose, and learning to say no to good opportunities that distract from God's best. He emphasizes that Christians are missionaries in their culture who need a concise message about sin and repentance, not just peace and joy.
“If God has called you to be a servant, don't stoop to be a king.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Life Management (2001)
Recorded: November 29, 2001
Duration: 41 min
Themes: focus, priorities, discipline, calling, purpose, obedience, mission, dedication, struggling with distractions, seeking life direction, busy professional, overwhelmed parent, new believer, ministry leader, young adult, feeling scattered
Scripture: Luke 2:41-52, Mark 1:14-15, Luke 5:31-32, John 6:15, John 6:37-38, John 16:21, John 17:1, Luke 3:23, Matthew 16:21
Theological Themes: stewardship, discipleship, sanctification, spiritual formation, biblical calling, christian mission, spiritual discipline, faithful living
Full Transcript
Session 6. We got seven of these things, I think, but at least six where we're looking at this whole issue of life management. Let me remind you of the premise. We had a week off, so time to retool here.
The principle is this: life teaches us and prepares us for a lot of things, but not everything. When we talk about things like success or achievement, they're relative terms. Remember when we talked about excellence? We said I could have a student that's got a 3.5 and a student that has a 2.5, and the student that's a 3.5 could be an underachiever and the other an overachiever.
We can't, and I think I'll mention this a couple times today—one of the inevitable things we do, and therefore maybe it's okay—is we, as we try to evaluate our own life, we inevitably measure it against others, classmates. You know, here's somebody from our class, look what they did, look what we've done. But you've got to understand, God in His wisdom has blessed some people with certain gifts, some people with certain talents, and He uses them and puts them in different places. You become extraordinarily enslaved to human thought and human evaluation if you're constantly just measuring yourself against other people.
The world doesn't tend to protect you and prepare you to be successful in every area of your life. So we're saying here's some things in the course of this six or seven weeks, here's some things that we're going to talk about to incorporate into your life that is at least going to help you as you try to be what God's called you to be.
The Reality of Distraction
We're going to talk today about focus. It has happened to me on many occasions, therefore I assume it happens to everybody, that you can have your day all laid out and one voicemail, one email, one phone call and your whole day changes. All of a sudden those things that you had all listed to do are all out of whack because of one call.
If one call can get a day that easily out of focus, I'm guessing that to get a week or a month or a year or a life out of focus doesn't take much. So I'm going to ask you to just take an inventory and just see how this works for you.
The Power of Saying No
It was Andrew McLaren who said this: "The man who has not learned to say no will be weak if not a wretched man as long as he lives." No in a variety of ways, obviously to sin. Some of you are just saying, I'm just a little boy who can't say no. But more than that, it's a proactive approach to your life.
Like everything that we've talked about in this series, there's tension here. Now here's what I'm going to tell you today, I'll give it to you in a nutshell. Figure out who you are, what you're supposed to do, stay focused, stay on task and don't get distracted. But there's a tension in that because God comes along sometimes and drops these divine interruptions into your life. How do you evaluate those?
Well, here's the principle: Don't let your schedule override your agenda. So let's use it this way. If part of what your life is all about is ministering and mentoring to people, and you've got a core group of people you've identified that you're going to minister to, and you've got your schedule in place and a guy calls and says, "I need to meet with you." I think it's very fair to say, "What's the urgency of this? I mean, is it that you need to work on a golf swing or is it that your family's falling apart?" "Well, it's my family's in real trouble." Then I'm willing to reshuffle that day. See, that's what I'm saying. There's tension in this. You've got to let it hang there.
Defining Focus
When we talk about focus, here's what we're talking about. And you've got the definition in your outline. By narrowing your scope of target or objective, you succeed in achieving a deep and lasting impact instead of a widespread, and here's the operative word, mediocrity. That's what we see all around us.
I know, my girls used to, and this is great for them. They'd be in a class, or they'd come home and they'd be looking at a thing, and as they studied, their greatest challenge was to figure out this: Will it be on the test? They'll be in class, they'll be covering something, and they'll go, "Excuse me, is this going to be on the test?" And I'm thinking, how did they get that? I'll tell you how they got it. They got it from their dad.
A Personal Example
I remember my freshman year at St. Ambrose. Let me be accurate, my first freshman year, because technically, I actually—this is kind of an interesting story—I ran for freshman class president when I was elected. They told me at the time, the first day student ever elected freshman class president. And because of just some problems academically, at the end of that year, I was still technically a freshman. So the following year, as kind of a prank, I ran for re-election on the campaign that I was the only guy that had experience for the job. But after the debate, I quit, just to jerk them around.
Well, I remember sitting in the gym, I could take you back to where I was sitting. They did the orientation, and they said, "Now, here, you've got a package, you've got a counselor, you've got any questions, ask your counselor." So I went over to my counselor, and I said, "Here I am," and he gets the paperwork, and I said, "I've got a question," and he said, "What's the question?" I said, "What grade point average do you need to graduate?" And he said, "2.0." And for the first time in my life, I had a goal: 2.0. And I didn't always achieve it, I mean, I stayed right in there enough to get through and out, with absolutely, virtually no effort.
But here's what's happened. I grew out of that. I meet a lot of people who say—
A Call Beyond Mediocrity
What's it take to be a freshman president? What's it take to be a 2.0 parent? I'll do that. What's it take to be a 2.0 employee? I don't even want a bonus, I just want to keep the job, I like coming in. I got a lot of people that want to be 2.0 something, mediocrity.
And maybe it's me, maybe it's maturity, maybe it's the fact, and I think a great part of it is that God has so changed my outlook, that mediocrity doesn't work anymore. You don't want to be at the end of your life and say, I got to tell you, I had a mediocre life. That to me just doesn't seem right. I want to look back and I want to see that God used me in a variety of ways, whatever those ways were.
Some of it is going to be in the marketplace, some is going to be in friendship, some is going to be in the church, some in the body of Christ, however it does. But I want to look at that. How do I have that sort of impact?
Following Christ's Human Example
Well, our role model for this study is the person of Christ, Jesus Christ. And again, for the sixth time, we want to make the point. When we say, look to Jesus' life, we're saying He's fully God and fully man, you can't model His deity. You can't do the God things that He did, but there's some human things that we see in His life. And to me, they're principles and they're nothing more than that, but we can take them and at least look at them and see if they don't have some validity as we apply them to our own life.
Jesus' Focus in Limited Loyalty
Six things, I think, this morning. Here's the first thing. He exhibited focus in His limited loyalty. If Jesus was anything, He was focused. Remember we said when we looked at purpose, His mission was defined before He was born. The angel appeared to Joseph and said, you'll name Him Jesus. You'll save His people from His sin.
Luke 2, here's the scene. They had been to the city for holidays and now they're returning home. It's Jesus and Mary and Joseph, I assume the rest of His family and others, traveling in a caravan. And it says this, now so it was that after three days they found Him in the temple.
Let me give you the time frame. They had left, apparently assumed Jesus was with someone else, traveled a day, discovered He was missing, traveled back a day, now they're back, we're into the third day. Jesus has been gone. And they see Him sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard Jesus were astonished at His understanding and His answers.
So when they saw Him, they were amazed. And His mother said to Him, son, why have you done this to us? Look at your father and I, we have sought you anxiously. And He said to them, why is it that you sought me? Did you not know I must be about my Father's business?
Understanding Parental Panic
Now I don't want to sterilize this at all. I remember when Sarah first got her driver's license. All I had to do is to say, Sarah, will you? And if the car was involved, she'd go do it. I'd say, Sarah, you know, would you go get me a burrito? Absolutely, I'll go get you a burrito. Now, it was about, I don't know, it's about a three minute drive up there. She'd be gone an hour and a half.
Well as a parent, at about the 40 minute mark, you just start to instinctively worry. I mean, the kids are, you know, 22 and 20 now. And the other night I kind of rolled over and saw the clock. And they're good. We don't have any curfews or anything. They're really good about being home. And I thought, oh man, that's a little late. And I didn't hear the alarm go off. And I thought, that's just strange.
And three or four minutes later, and now I'm laying there, my mind's wondering, I'm wondering, what did she do? What's going on? What's happening? About three or four minutes later, I hear the alarm go off and they come down and say, hey, we're home. And they go to bed. But that's your natural thing.
You've got this 12 year old. He's disappeared. Your mind begins to think the worst, I would assume. And they begin to panic. And I'm guessing they look all over and they go back and they find Him in the temple. And you can even sense some of this in Mary's voice. Look, look at what you've done to your father and me. That kind of a response.
Jesus' Clear Priority
And Jesus says, wait a minute. I should have known I'd be about my Father's business. How'd you miss this? Joseph, don't you remember the angel appearing? Mary? Virgin birth thing?
In fact, I went into Women's Ministries yesterday. We've got a very creative Women's Ministries group at church. And what they, they do a lot of things great. They do the best skits. Write all their own stuff. And yesterday's skit was Mary appearing to the wrong woman. Or, I'm sorry, the angel appearing to the wrong woman. And they're coming to talk about this virgin birth and this guy's going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, not me. And it was a very clever skit.
Mary knew this. She knew what happened. He said, I'd be about my Father's business. I'm right where you expected me to be.
Doing God's Business in Obscurity
Now, here's what I want you to see. He now basically disappears for 18 years, till He reemerges at age 30 in His public ministry. The one thing we know about Jesus is, I'd be doing my Father's business. My point to you is this. So should you, even if like Jesus, you do it in relative obscurity. For 18 years, the best we could tell, He's an apprentice carpenter.
I deal with men all the time who are saying, I want to get serious about the things of God. When? Or, I'll get serious about the things of God if. If I was really called to do this, or if I was, I always want to be somewhere else. And here you go. Here's your call to be seeking your Father's business wherever you are.
There's a thing in AA, I've never been through it, but my friends tell me about it, called the geographical cure. All of a sudden, things aren't going well, so I move to Joplin, Missouri, and everything will be better there. There is that something in human nature. Susan and I, a couple of years ago, were in New England. And we had a weekend gig, and then we got a full week just to drive through New England.
while the leaves were changing. It was terrific. We had no reservations, no plans, no nothing.
We're driving along, and we're in Vermont. I have no idea where. We're driving along, and I said, "You hungry?" And she said, "Yes, I'm hungry." I said, "What would you like to eat?" And she said, "It doesn't really matter." I hate that answer, because I know it's going to matter before long.
So we're driving along, and I said, "Oh, there's a steak place. How about a steak place?" And she said, "Oh, that's a big piece of meat. I don't think that sounds very good." And I said, "You know what? I thought it didn't matter." "Well, I don't want steak."
We're driving along, and we see, and for whatever reason this strikes me as odd, we see a Chinese restaurant. We're just driving along in Vermont down this road. Here's this Chinese restaurant. So I said, "How about Chinese food?" And she said, "Well, it doesn't really go with Vermont, but it sounds kind of good." And I said, "Well, let's try it."
We go in. It's this magnificent, beautiful place. This guy comes up. He takes our orders for what we want to drink, and he leaves. I said, "What nationality is this guy?" The student said, "I don't know." I said, "He looks different. He's not Asian. I wonder what he is. I'll ask him." She said, "Don't ask him. You'll embarrass him." I said, "I'm not going to embarrass the guy. He'll be proud of his nationality."
So he brings me the drinks, and I said, "Hey, what's your program? What nationality are you?" And he said, "I'm Hawaiian." I said, "Hawaiian? That's interesting. How'd you end up in Vermont?"
Now listen, this is so perfect. He said, "When I was a kid, I used to surf in the morning, and then I'd lay on the beach and read books about snow and mountains and skiing in Vermont, and I always dreamt about going there." And I'm thinking, the 14,000 people that live in Vermont shovel snow in the morning, and then read about surfing in the afternoon, and always dream about going there.
To me, when he walked away, I said, "Isn't that an incredible moment? What a great insight into people." Wherever we are, our assumption is we ought to be, or at least want to be, somewhere else. Jesus says, "Listen, don't you know, no matter what, I'm going to be about My Father's business." And My point is not just there, My point is those next 18 years in obscurity, He pursued His Father's business. And so can you, in a very limited way.
Jesus Focused on a Specific Group
Here's the second thing. He exhibited focus in that He seemed to have a specific group that He spoke to. In Luke chapter 5, they're coming to Jesus, and they're very upset with Him. They're saying, "You're hanging around with hookers and tax collectors." Jesus' response to them is this: "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
Jesus understood exactly, not just why He was here, but who He was going to speak to. I want to suggest to you that God has given you a background and a purpose and a meaning and an experience that opens you up to speak to people in a special way. Some of you have been extraordinarily successful in your business pursuits. And that opens up for you a group of people, and it gives you the opportunity to speak to them.
Others of you, here you go, it's in marketing terms, you just need to understand your market. Who has God called you to serve? And I know the answer, "God's called me to serve everybody." But I'm saying, what's your niche? Jesus seemed to understand that there was a specific group of people. In this case, it was sinners. And what did they need? They needed repentance.
Jesus Focused a Very Concise Message
Let me kick this into the third point, because I'm going to spend a little time on this. Jesus focused a very concise message. Here you go, in Mark chapter 1, verse 14: "After John was put in prison," that's John the Baptist, "Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God." Here's what He said: "The time has come, the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe."
Listen to this message. "The time has come," listen up, the urgency that's there. "The kingdom of God is near." Here's the opportunity. "Repent and believe," that's what you need to do with it. Jesus is, and here's a term we've used in a negative way, Jesus is on message.
1996 presidential election. It did not matter what question you asked Bill Clinton, it ended with, "Save Social Security, education, Medicare and the environment." Every answer had the same thing in it. "Save Social Security, Medicare, education and the environment." It got so much so that even some of the commentators would laugh at the response because they knew. You know, "What do you think about Somalia?" "Save Social Security, Medicare, education and the environment." That's how we answered every question.
Bob Dole is flapping around on the other side, trying to come up with it. "Well I was a vet," which is fine, "and I'm from Kansas, and you know, I don't know really much. We'll get back to you."
Stay on Message
Well, I have never in my life said this to anyone. I'm going to say it to you. Model Bill Clinton. It even hurts to say it. In this sense, get on message and stay on message. That election was over the minute they nominated and started to pursue him with Bob Dole. He had no chance. Man, I'm telling you, I remember it to this day. "Save Social Security, Medicare, education and the environment." And those of you that follow this stuff know the truth of this thing.
When people, what's your message? Understand what that message is. Get on message and stay on message. And your message is, "The time has come," there's urgency, "the kingdom of God is near," and "What do you want me to do? Repent and believe the good news."
I believe, and I've used this language a lot lately. At church, I've used it every week for the last four or five weeks, and I'm bringing it into here. You need to understand that you're a missionary. You're not going off to a foreign country. You're going off to this culture. God's placed you
Here, and you're a missionary. What's your message? And you need to be able to say it in a concise way that presents the opportunity and that says, here's what I want you to do.
If you're a missionary, if you're going to go to Paraguay, we're going to bring you in. We're going to give you language skills, cultural skills, history of Paraguay. You need to understand the culture if you're going to go and be effective in that culture. The same thing is true here.
Let me tell you, a lot of the ways you've been trained and raised and prepared to deliver this message don't work anymore because the listeners don't have any way of decoding.
Understanding Your Audience
I'm talking to a guy a couple years ago. We're in Canada. We're at the Chateau at Lake Louise. Pretty good duty. While I'm there for two weeks, we probably spoke to 3,000 people over those two weekends, 700 couples each weekend, 750 couples.
I'm with a guy. In those settings, what happens is the Christians want to dominate your time, asking you a bunch of questions that aren't that interesting, and what I want to do is get to the pagan. So when the pagan guy comes with a question, I'm very available to him.
So this guy comes up and he says, "You know, I don't believe this or understand it. Can we meet?" I said, "Sure." We sit down. I'm talking to this guy, and I mean, I'm laying out some great stuff. If they ask the right questions, I've got incredible answers with great illustrations. I've just done it a lot.
This guy asked me a beach ball question. I don't remember what it was, and I'm answering it. As I'm talking, he's doing the Rudy. Remember Rudy? Rudy's our dog, and the more you talk to Rudy, if you just engage Rudy long enough and talk to Rudy, as you talk to Rudy, he'll just kind of go. Well, this guy's about here, and I'm going, he's not getting what I'm saying.
So I stopped, and I said, "You look like maybe I'm not explaining this very well." I had begun my first illustration probably 15 minutes before this by telling a story about Peter. Here's what he said to me: "Who's Peter?"
And I said, "Peter, Peter the Apostle. Peter denied Jesus." He said, "I have no idea." I said, "What church do you go to?" He's 42. He said, "I've never been in a church in my life, not for a wedding, not for a funeral. I've never been in a church."
Well, Peter isn't going to work with him. He's wondering where Paul and Mary are. It isn't helping him any. It's of no value. You got to be listening, and you got to be communicating to them in a way that they're ready to hear.
Jesus' Message and Our Focus
And listen to Jesus' message one more time. "The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe." Remember what we said a minute ago? Jesus said, "I've come to call the sinners to repentance." What's wrong with man is sin.
Here's where I think, and I'm just going to go down this road a little bit. In your evangelism, don't be talking to people about the peace that comes from knowing Christ, the joy that comes from knowing Christ. If you want to throw that in there, that's fine.
That same time in the chateau at Lake Louise, I'm talking to this guy, and he said, "I like you. You seem like a straight shooter." I said, "Thank you." He said, "All my friends keep trying to get me into this Christian thing." And I said, "Okay." He said, "I don't need it."
The Real Problem Isn't Happiness
I said, "What do you mean you don't need it?" He said, "All they talk to me about is the peace and the joy." He said, "Tom, I got 48 zillion dollars. We're going to finish here. I'm going to drive to Calgary. My plane's waiting to take me to Palm Springs for the winter. I got a great wife and great kids. I'm very healthy. I'm very peaceful. I'm very happy. I'm very content. I don't need Jesus to make me happy."
And I had to agree with him. I think ultimate happiness, you need Jesus. But I said, "Your friends have done you a great disservice, because your problem isn't happiness. Your problem is sin. Where your real hard time is going to come is maybe not in this life, but at death. Because at death you'll spend eternity in a place called hell."
It's not about peace and joy. Do you get this? Peace and joy are the byproducts of our relationship with Christ. But our relationship with Christ is based on us being a sinner and needing a Savior.
When you start talking and you're on message and you're with your people and you're talking to them about peace and joy and happiness, often times they're miserable, but listen, they can go get a new wife, a new husband, a new job, and they're going to feel, albeit counterfeit, they're going to feel peace and joy.
The World's Counterfeits
See, the world... I was talking the other day, just teaching along, and I made this comment, and I assume it's right. It's the only thing that popped into my mind you don't know. But we only counterfeit valuable things.
I've got a guy that comes to one of the studies, that used to come to one of the studies, he subsequently moved, but I talk to his dad all the time. He works with the Secret Service. Part of the Secret Service is tracking down counterfeiters. And I want to ask him, in the last 25 years, have you had a case where somebody was counterfeiting Confederate currency?
I don't know. My suspicion is no, because this stuff is worthless. Unless it's genuine, I guess it has some history. But it's of no value. You walk into the Circle K, although you've got a 50-50 shot with some of them of sliding through. But they're going to go, no, that's false. Nobody's counterfeiting Confederate currency. They're counterfeiting this stuff that we use, the good stuff.
When the Satan comes along, what's he going to counterfeit? He's going to counterfeit the good stuff. What's the good stuff? Peace, love, joy. Now we know it's not the real thing, because the real thing only comes through a relationship with Christ and from the Holy Spirit. But it masks, for moments, that desperate need. And the desperate need is, get rid of this sin, the consequence of it that sends me to hell, and the bondage
Urgency of Time
There's a part of it that keeps me miserable in this life. There's your message. And I'll tell you, in a world that's so confused, you have such a clear message. You know what your message is? Get on it. Stay on it.
Jesus understood. He had a finite time frame. This is Luke 3:23. Now when Jesus was about 30 years old, He began His ministry. Again, cut me slack on the dates and the time, but essentially, we know a little bit about Jesus' birth, and then we see that occasion we saw in the temple, and then He basically disappears from our radar screen for about 18 years. He comes back at age 30, and we begin to see snippets of His public life, the biggest concentration, really, in the last year of it.
In fact, from about two years into it, in Matthew 16:21, and now heading to that last year, Jesus then has an urgency. It says, "From that time on, Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, teachers, that He must be killed, and on the third day He'll rise again." And in John 17:1, now this is now the night before He's going to die, He said, "Father, the time has come." Jesus understood the finiteness of life.
The Reality of Mortality
Those of you who have endured over the last 8, 9, 10 years, our Year in Review Preview, know that we will hit this hard in about a month. There is a finiteness to your life. You don't have forever.
We just celebrated, at the beginning of this year, the Priority Living 10th anniversary, and I was thinking about it the other day. We started with 12 board members, and a different philosophy, really, of what we were going to do. Our youngest board member was 28. Our oldest, at the time, was about 50. We're now 10 years later. The 28-year-old is dead. The 50-year-old is dead. Another guy who was my age, he and his family are all dead.
And I'm telling you, if you go back to La Paloma, to that first time we met together, I'm telling you, these guys that I'm talking about, these three were pictures of health. You don't know. I don't say that to scare you. I say that so maybe in your head you'll get through what Jesus understood, and that is, listen, I've got to go die. I've got to get this thing figured out. I don't have forever.
Here's a phrase I wrote down: We have an unwarranted sense of immortality. We know on one hand we won't live forever, and yet on the other hand we plan as though we're going to. We know on one hand we're not going to live forever, and yet we live like we have all the time in the world.
Your Divine Purpose
And all of a sudden, if you take what we're talking about, if you take a message, and you take a focus, and you take a group, and you get a sense that God puts a passion in your heart, when I think mediocre, that's what I think—passionless. I mean, you've got the message that the world needs. God has decided that He's going to reach out to this world through people, and you're one of them. If that does not excite you, then there is really, seriously something wrong with you. You have a very deep problem, and it's a spiritual problem.
Protective Attachment
Here's the fourth or fifth thing. I guess we've got a couple things left. Jesus had a protective attachment. This is John 6. Every time I read this, I think, especially like after last week Thanksgiving, Jesus would have been great at Thanksgiving, because this is right after He fed the 5,000.
They saw the miracle that Jesus did, and here's what they said. "Surely this is the prophet who's come down into this world." Jesus, knowing that they intended to make Him a king by force, withdrew into the hills by Himself. Here's what they're saying. Jesus, we're going to give you a platform. We're going to make you king. And Jesus says, no, I can't do that.
A friend of mine has a great phrase: If God has called you to be a servant, don't stoop to be a king. If God's called you to be a servant, and He has, don't stoop to be a king. Don't settle for that position. Jesus says, no, that's not it.
Learning to Say No
I just want to make this point, and then we're off to the last one. In your life, as you begin to live, and as you get focused, and as things happen, people are going to come into your life, and they're going to want to make you king. They won't say king. They want to make you chairman of the board. They want to put you on this committee.
I was talking to a guy the other day. We were talking about a mutual friend. He said, "If you can get him to serve on your committee, you've got the greatest volunteer in the world and a guaranteed resource that whatever you do will be successful." If you're like that, they're going to come at you with a thousand different things. And if you're like that in a church, the word's going to spread real quickly: You give the project to Bob, and Bob gets it done. You've got to be able to say no.
They come to Jesus and say, "We've got this great plan. God's given us a wonderful plan for your life, Jesus. It's to make you king." And Jesus says, "No, I don't think so."
Focus in Responsibility
Here's the last plan, or the last point. He exhibited His focus in responsibility. John 6: "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my Father's will, but the will of Him who sent me."
We understand what the author of Proverbs writes: Man rolls the dice. God determines the outcome. God's sovereign. I've got like six minutes. Let me just spend it on this point, just so you get it. Our instinct is to be very result-oriented.
We, as you know, we haven't taken the republic for a long time. We're protesting something, but I don't remember what it is. We've gotten past that. When we were on vacation, we had USA Today a couple of times, and Susan said, "This is pretty good." I said, "This is pretty good. Maybe we should get it at home." You know, we don't read the paper or anything, but maybe we should get it at home. She said, "Okay, I'll just have them deliver it." And they do. They just throw it at the house just like a regular...
In the time we've had the newspaper, there's probably been three times in the last three months that I've read it all the way through. Here's what I'll do. I'll grab the sports section, and I don't read the sports section. I go to the back and start at the back because the stuff I like is in the back. Who qualified at the PGA school? Who did what? What's the status here?
I may go to the middle section because I don't follow sports, but it's the universal language. So if I know enough, it lets me talk to people and open doors. I may look at the top ten pitchers so I got some idea who's winning and who's losing. But whenever I get it, that's right where I go. I go right to the results, right to the box score. Did you win or did you lose?
Results vs. Process
Because in our world, if you won, you're a winner. If you lose, you're a loser. He's a loser. Get rid of him. I remember when Gene Stallings went down to coach at Alabama. He lost his first game coaching at Alabama. I was talking to a guy who was in Birmingham. The first call on the sports talk show after the game said this: "He's a loser. Get rid of him. They'll never make it." One game into this thing. "Get him out of here. He's a loser."
If you lose, you're a loser. If you win, you're a winner. Here's what's interesting. In God's economy, that's not the way it is. Because God doesn't look at results. God looks at process.
We tend to focus on results. Did the stock go up? Did the stock go down? It doesn't matter that it went down because they put all this money into R&D and they think they've got a new product coming and it will really help long term. We don't care. It went down. Sell it. He didn't perform. Get rid of him.
God comes along and says, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Here's the deal. You follow the process. I'll take care of the results." It's a total reversal of the way we operate.
What God Expects from You
So in our economy, as we're looking at things, we look at the results. God looks at the process. When you come to me and say, "What does God want from me? What's God expecting from me?" I got the answer. It's very simple. One word. Obedience. That's what He's looking for from you.
Now how that manifests itself may be very different. What's God looking for from you? Obedience.
I've used the illustration before. Let's say I've got Jim and Bruce. They both go out and share their faith today. One guy, as Bruce is sharing, this guy comes to Christ. Jim is sharing. This guy says, "I'm not interested." The question I ask is, who is God happiest with? And the answer is, He's equally pleased with both. Because what God's concerned about is your obedience to proclaim the gospel, not the results. In fact, my Bible teaches me that I can't save a soul. Only God can do that.
A Problem with Modern Evangelism
I'm going to take just a short little detour here for about 90 seconds. For some of you, it's not going to click. That's okay. We'll be right back to you. For the rest of you, this is going to make sense.
Our evangelism today is all screwed up because we've become results oriented, not process oriented. So what you'll get is you'll go in. I've done it. I'll go down, go to a place like Phoenix Country Club. They'll bring in a guy, always a successful guy. They'll bring him in. Now, because he's a successful guy, we want to come and hear him. That's fine. Got no problem.
Here we are, using this platform. Now he gets up and he talks about his success. Then he'll start talking about, "But in the midst of all this success, there was something missing in my life. What was missing in my life? Well, there wasn't peace. There wasn't joy." And he talks about peace and joy. He says, "If you want that peace and joy, then you pray after me. Pray after me and ask Jesus into your heart."
So what you end up with is a guy who's prayed a prayer, whose life is unchanged, who doesn't understand sin, doesn't understand repentance. Do you understand that hell is filled with people who check boxes at lunches at the Phoenix Country Club and who walk the aisles at a Billy Graham crusade?
The Real Message
This isn't about peace and joy. This is about, listen, buddy, my problem wasn't that I was successful or that I was unsuccessful. My problem was I'm a successful sinner. See, there's the message. But if all you want to do is get a guy to pray a prayer, you're going to take that message and you're going to dilute it to the point where it will be unrecognizable by the Apostle Paul.
Again, for some of you, I know that doesn't mean anything. But as you look around, you go, "How come I've got churches that are filled, pews that are filled and nothing's happening?" Because you've got unconverted people there who checked boxes at a luncheon and have never been told about hell or heaven or sin or repentance. That's how you grow.
We're sliding perfectly into next week's topic, dogmatism. We'll talk about that next week.
Father, help us see this truth. Let us live lives that are transformed by Your Holy Spirit. God, I pray that like the Apostle, we will be able to say, "Forgetting what lies behind, I strain toward what is ahead." God, this one thing we do, we do it in a variety of different ways. 150, 200 people in this room, we're going to live this in 150, 200 different ways. Don't let us fall into the trap of thinking we've got to do it just like everybody else does it.
You've called us. You've saved us. You've given us a purpose and a platform and a message and an audience. Let us deliver that truth with urgency. The time has come. Understanding the opportunity, the kingdom of God is near. And then tell people what they need to do. Repent and believe the good news, the gospel.
of Jesus Christ. Father, at this time of year that just kind of obliterates the whole idea of your Son coming, let us make sure that we stay on message. It's not safe Social Security, Medicare, education and the environment. It's Jesus Christ is Lord and King. God, let us deliver that message. We ask it in His precious name. Amen. See you next week.