Removing Anxiety From Life
Tom Shrader addresses the anxiety that comes from living in a rapidly changing world, focusing on Jesus's teaching about worry in Luke 12. He examines the parable of the rich fool who trusted in his possessions rather than God, then provides six practical steps for removing anxiety from life: believing God's promises, pursuing His priorities, praying for His involvement, praising His faithfulness, experiencing His peace, and gaining His eternal perspective.
“Peace is not the absence of turmoil, it's the presence of God.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Afloat in a World That's Circling the Drain (2002)
Recorded: June 13, 2002
Duration: 41 min
Themes: anxiety, worry, trust, peace, prayer, faithfulness, perspective, priorities, overwhelmed by circumstances, facing financial stress, dealing with uncertainty, struggling with materialism, new to faith, middle aged adult, business professional, parent under pressure
Scripture: Luke 12:13-34, Luke 12:15, Luke 12:16, Luke 12:30, Luke 12:31, 1 Corinthians 10:13, Matthew 6:33, Philippians 4:6, 1 Corinthians 3, Psalm 39
Theological Themes: providence, god's sovereignty, stewardship, worldliness, spiritual disciplines, prayer life, eternal perspective, biblical promises
Full Transcript
Eight lessons in seven weeks—we won't be here on July 4th. I have eight lessons, seven weeks, so one of them is going to get skipped. I thought I was going to skip this one, but I got into it and I didn't want to do that.
Let me give you the premise of the series very quickly. The world is circling the drain. Things are especially changed. Things are changing very quickly, and almost everything is changing. Some of it's good. Some of it's not so good. All of it seems to be inevitable. Some of it makes life easier.
I spoke at a graduation a couple of years ago and tried to help these kids understand that their world is so different than mine. When I graduated, we didn't have cell phones. We didn't have CD players. We may have just gotten our first color TV. I had a great line that I wasted on these kids because they didn't get it. I said, "When I graduated from high school, Nike was a Greek god." They just went, "Oh, okay." I wasted it.
The Reality of Constant Change
Everything's changing all around us. Not necessarily for the good, but not necessarily for the worse either. Sometimes people say, "Oh, things are changing, the good old days." Listen, stuff changes. That's the way life is.
With change oftentimes comes anxiety. This volatile world we live in produces a certain amount of tension and stress and anxiety. Life is difficult. If you need to write that down, you have issues and need to see me. Life is tough.
Here's what we're talking about today: how to remove anxiety from your life. Let me tell you, there's a sense in which we've overspoken here. We can't remove anxiety from your life. Anxiety is part of life.
Understanding Life's Ups and Downs
Here's how circumstances work. They just go up and down. There are peaks—times when that big deal closes and you never thought it was going to. Then there are valleys—I just got an email from a lady the other day about her friend whose dad is dying. That's just part of life.
There are times when you get that car and things are moving like mad, and then there are times when some idiot pulls out in front of you and you hit him. That's just life. We can't take this out of life.
What we're trying to help you do is understand how you can stay constant in the middle of life. We can't remove all of these external factors. That's just part of it. When we want to know how to do this, we go to the greatest how-to book ever written, which is the Scripture itself.
The Timeless Relevance of Scripture
Our theme at summer camp this year is countering the culture. My point to the kids will be that you're in a culture that says everything is relative. "That works for you, that's great. That's true for you, that's great." The idea is that there's no truth. Truth is subjective. Truth is relative.
When we come to the Scripture, we have the Word of God. It's the greatest how-to book ever written, and yet its latest entry is over 1,900 years old. Yet it's as fresh as this morning's newspaper. Why? You're not going to like this, but it's true. It's because man hasn't changed.
When you read those stories, especially those Old Testament stories, they just come to life. They just connect. When I read the story of Joseph and see his brothers and what they did to him, it just comes to life. Why? Because we're basically the same. We haven't changed. Our inclinations, our instincts, our thought processes are the same.
The Consistency of Human Problems
Here's the big point: our problems are the same. They've got different trappings around them, but our problems are the same. So the solutions are the same. We go to the author, to God Himself.
When we talk about anxiety in our life, it comes from so many different places. One of them has to do with material things, needs and wants. We're going to spend about 15 or 20 minutes talking about needs or wants, and then I'm going to give you six things. You have them in your outline. Six steps to removing anxiety from your life, and they apply to all areas.
Jesus and Material Concerns
Jesus tells parables in the Gospels. There are stories. There are times where He stops and teaches in story form, and it's as though in those moments He wants to make an emphatic point. Jesus tells 36 parables, and 16 of them deal with material things. Material things or possessions are addressed over 200 times in the Scriptures. Faith and prayer are addressed about 500 times. These material things become very significant.
Why? Because our relationship with our stuff is constantly giving us a barometer of how we are with the Lord.
Here's the story. It's Luke chapter 12, verse 13: "Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."
of time on all that goes on. He goes, "Teacher"—some of your translations will say "rabbi." It would not be uncommon for a teacher or rabbi to be called to intervene in one of these discussions.
This is a man—I presume a man. It doesn't say a man. It says "my brother," but we assume a man. Don't know that. We assume, and it's probably reasonable he's not the firstborn, because if that were the case, he'd have a double inheritance. It's a guy, and he says, "Listen, I want this inheritance divided up." Jesus doesn't even get involved. He gives him an interesting principle here in verse 15: "Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
The Deception of Materialism
What this guy was doing is what most of us will do by instinct, and that is we'll immediately go and we'll look at material things and we'll equate those material things to life itself. This is real living. One of them—I don't know if it's Corona or Budweiser—one of the beers, has a terrific commercial. It's two guys, and they're laying out on the beach, and there's four, five, six girls playing volleyball. And the one guy's got the beer, and he says to the other, "This is really living."
What they don't show you are these two guys about two hours later over behind a tree. They don't show you all the devastation that comes with it. I'm telling you, more destruction is done by booze and drugs and alcohol. It just screws up everything. We're always saying, "Don't have a beer, get the tape." We've talked about all that stuff before.
Here you go. Jesus is saying, "Watch out. Watch out for stuff." The tendency is to think, "I got this new car. This is really living. I got this house, man, with the white carpet. It's really living. I'm really living." Jesus says, "Boy, you're making a mistake."
The Parable of the Rich Fool
And then He tells a parable. Luke chapter 12, verse 16. Jesus tells this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop." Stop. It's a rich guy who has a great crop. I just want you to see, this guy's not a loser. He's the winner. If he were around today, he'd be renting rooms at the hotel, and he'd be doing no money down crop production or something. He'd have a 900 number. He'd be on TV with Cindy Margolis doing "this is this and this is how you get your crops in," type of a thing.
This is a winner guy, not a loser. This is a guy at the top of his game. This is a guy that in many instances is the guy or gal you want to be. Very, very important to understand that. Got this bumper crop. Everything works out. Gets the bumper crop.
Here's what he does. He thought to himself. He's got a dilemma. He's got an issue. He goes to his favorite counselor: himself. You are in real serious trouble at this point.
The Danger of Success
Let me make a side point. I can't spend a lot of time on it. You are really vulnerable in good times way more than in bad times. In bad times, you know you're in trouble, so you're out looking for information and input and direction. In good times, you're thinking you're almost invincible. You don't need counsel or wisdom then. "I'll think about this myself."
Here's his conclusion. And listen to the singular personal pronoun as he speaks: "This is what I shall do. I have no place to store my crops." Then he said, "This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones and there I will store my grain and my goods and I will say to myself, 'You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy. Eat, drink and be merry.'"
He's planning. He's saying, "Listen, we're going to make accommodations here." Jesus is not condemning planning. You ought to plan. I think it was—you know, "I'm really spiritual. I'm a really spiritual. I just trust God. Get that. I don't have insurance. I don't have health insurance. I just trust God." And then I'll watch the guy go out and get in his car and put on a seat belt. I'm thinking, if you trust Him, why would you wear a seat belt? Why would you wear a seat belt and not buy insurance? That doesn't make sense to me.
The Problem With Self-Reliance
This is not about planning. You ought to plan. You ought to think. You ought to prepare. If you're a young man—and that means anything under 52—if you're a young man and you don't have life insurance and you have little kids, I think you're a fool. That's my view. I just think that's reckless, but that's me.
Well, this guy's planned. His problem is not planning. His problem is he's put all his faith and trust in his plans. "Eat, drink, and be merry." But God said to him, "You fool, this very night your life will be demanded of you. Who's going to get what you've prepared? This is how it is with anyone who stores up things for himself, but is not rich toward God."
He said, "Here's the problem. It's not that you plan. It's not even that you planned and stored and saved. It's that you've hoarded and you think this is life. This isn't life. This isn't real. This isn't permanent. This is temporary. And if I want to be rich, if I want an account that is really growing, I want to invest and be rich in the things of God, not in the things of man."
Teaching the Disciples
And then He tells us—and I'm going to go very quickly because we've talked about this passage over the last six weeks, maybe three times—He gives the story. Then Jesus says to His disciples. So you see what's happened here. This is how you teach. A man comes forward or a person comes forward with a question. Jesus tells a parable to the crowd. And now He says, "Come here, guys. Do you understand what we just saw there? You understand what just happened there?"
He says to His disciples, "I tell you, don't worry about life or what you'll eat or about your body, what you'll wear. Life is more than food, the body more than clothing." Here you go. You're sick of this. "Consider the ravens." Consider the ravens. The word "consider" means literally to see. It means to get it. I remember, oh golly, now four or five years ago, Haley
She came in one night and I'm sitting there and she said, "Hey, I got some homework." And I said, "Well, I can help you." And she said, "It's math, dad." And I said, "Oh, all right." And she said, "Where's mom?" And I said, "Well, I don't think she's here." And she goes, "Oh, brother." So I said, "You want me to help you?" She said, "No." And so she went down to her room.
So I walked out because Haley's cool. What Haley does when she studies is take frustration breaks. And when she takes a frustration break, she gets a half gallon of ice cream and just eats until she's ready, which to me is the answer to life right there. So I go down and I say, "Hey, you ready for a frustration break?" And she said, "No, I'm frustrated. But I can't take a break. I don't see this. I don't see this." And as I'm walking down the hall, I can hear her saying, "I don't get it. I don't see it."
About five minutes later, I hear this: "I got it!" And literally I've heard others who have said they never had this experience in math or science or English or anything really. But I heard her say at that moment, things just came together. And she came down and she said, "Look at this. It was right there all the time. Look at it. There it is. I got it. Where's the ice cream?"
Consider the Ravens: God's Care for His Creation
Consider the ravens. The word "consider" means "get it." Consider the ravens. And you know this - we cannot spend much time on it. They don't sow. They don't reap. God feeds them. Jesus says, "Look at the lilies of the field. Solomon didn't look that good." God clothed them. Here's the idea: God took care of those things. He's going to take care of you.
In the middle of this, He says you're much more valuable than a bird. We used to have a guy that came to this study who could not stand it when I'd say this. He'd say, "No, no, no, no. A bird, a dog, a horse, a cat, a person - they're all equally valuable before God." Are you kidding me? A cow? A cow's here to give milk and eat. And we're here to cut it up medium well. That's how a cow is. It's a cow. It's not a person. I mean, there's a big difference here. And Jesus' whole point is, if God takes care of the raven, He's going to take care of you.
Now, when we say "consider the ravens," I think we've made this point, but I know it's easy to forget it. The raven just doesn't go, "Oh, God's going to take care of it. I wonder when it will be here." These ravens and these birds are very, very busy. They're flying, they're scavenging, they're looking, they're hunting, they're packing, they're working, they're doing what they were designed to do. So here's what Jesus is saying: You do what you were designed to do, and God's going to take care of that. Well, what were you designed to do? Well, you were designed to seek first His kingdom.
The Source of Most Material Anxiety
When I start to worry, here's what Jesus says: Don't set your heart on what you'll eat or what you'll drink. Don't worry about that. The pagans run after that. He said, there's the test. Don't set your heart on these things. Don't be worried about getting your needs met. God's going to meet your needs.
Most of our anxiety in this area of material things is caused by either this need - and we're worried about God meeting it - or these excesses that we want. These things that are beyond it. Here's what Scripture teaches: Don't worry about your income, and don't worry about your assets. God's going to take care of them. He's going to meet all your needs here on earth and whatever's invested in His kingdom.
Later on, He says, "Put your savings" - I'm paraphrasing here - "put your savings in a purse that will never wear out. Put your stuff where moth and rust won't get them." Where is that? It's heaven. So what He's saying is, if there's an account that I want to build, it's that account in God's kingdom.
Six Things to Do When You Have Stress
Here you go. I'm just going right to the six things. Let me give them to you. We've got twenty-one minutes or so. Six things. When you've got stress in your life, six things.
Number one: believe God's promises. Luke 12:30 - the pagan world runs after this stuff. The pagan world's sitting up at night trying to figure out what it's going to eat, what it's going to drink, where it's going to live. The pagan world worries about this. Again, He's not saying don't be thinking about them. Not to be, don't concern about them. Don't pursue them. Don't work. Not that. He's just saying, understand God's going to take care of this.
I was in a meeting, oh golly, years ago now, and apparently I was communicating that I was uptight or nervous or worried or something. And about a week later, I got in the mail this little thing. It was a frame about this big that sat just nicely on a desk. And inside, this guy had generated this in his computer, just beautifully done. It said, "Tom, trust me, I have everything under control. Jesus."
A Counseling Tip: Remember What God Has Done
I'm with a guy not long ago and he's really going through some stuff and it's like, "I tell you what," and I knew it was there, so here's what I did. And this little counseling tip for you. I had some trail mix and I said, "Hey, I hear there's a lot of things going on." And now I just listen. And so he starts to tell me. And he's processing some things and there's some tough stuff in this.
Here's what I did. I said, "You know what? God's done a lot in your life, hasn't He?" He said, "Yeah, He really has." I said, "Tell me about it. Because I know you're way different than when I met you three years ago. Tell me about what God's done in your life."
Well, he starts to talk and now he's talking about this and God did this. Now he's overwhelmed. Now he begins to cry. Now I got the Kleenex out and he's crying. He says, "God did this" and I said, "Isn't that incredible? Now hang on to that thought for a moment." I just want to go one step forward because what we did was rewind. I said, "Now let's fast forward. And He promises to do all of that again. He didn't bring you this far to leave you alone for you to figure it out on your own." Again, I'm not dismissing
Trusting God in Relationships
Your role is important, but you must trust Him. I'm not saying you don't have to work. All I'm saying is trust Him. You're in a relationship.
We get this all the time. It's more with women than men, although increasingly with men—women who are just in marriages where they want something in their husband that isn't there. He's just not doing it. They've tried everything. They've written him notes. They've put my tape in his car. They've given him books. They've taken him to seminars. They bring him to church on Easter. They do everything they can to this guy and they're going nuts saying, "What can I do?"
My answer is just love him. My answer to everything is make love to him and fix dinner and eat. That's my answer in counseling all the time. So if you're going to come to me, there's my answer. Show him that you love him. Show him that you care.
Here's what you're trying to do, my friend. You're trying to have your husband meet your needs, and he isn't going to do it and he can't do it. Only God is going to meet those needs. That's just the way it is. So you better find your fulfillment in God.
I have the same thing with guys all the time, especially guys. You get a guy and a gal. They don't know Christ. They get married. They're coming along. All of a sudden the guy trips into a study like this. The next thing you know, God's working in his life. His things are changing. He wants to go to church. He wants to party. It would surprise you, but we get that a lot. He's going, "What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?" The answer is, hey, you love her. You nurture her. You be the husband you can be. You let her see the difference, but you got to understand your identity and ultimately your ultimate fulfillment is in Christ, not in her. And He promises to be there.
First Response to Anxiety: Believe His Promises
So there's the first thing you do in the midst of anxious times. You believe His promises. 1 Corinthians 10:13—He'll never test you beyond that which you can endure. So when you're sitting there saying, "I don't think I can handle it," the answer is you can handle it. He wouldn't bring it to you if you couldn't handle it. You may need some help. You may need to realign. You may need to bring in some other resources, but you can handle it.
There was some show on the other night on living on the edge—radical living. These guys are jumping off cliffs and all this other stuff. Should have said stupid living. It looked like to me, but that's just me. You want edgy living? You want to live on the edge here? Try this: trust God and let Him take care of it. There's edgy living. Don't try to manipulate. Don't try to maneuver. Don't try to think your way through and connive and bring on. Just trust God and see what He does and see how this works.
Because you've got these promises in the area of material things, but also in the area of relationships. I see it in husbands. I see it in wives. You can't be the Holy Spirit in somebody else's life. That's God's job.
Second Response: Pursue God's Priorities
There's a second thing: pursue God's priorities. Luke 12:31—"Seek first His kingdom." Matthew records it a little bit differently: "Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness." In other words, rather than be obsessed with these things—work, clothes, housing and all that—again, you understand, I think what I'm saying. This is not anti-material. It's anti-materialism. We're saying to you work hard. We're saying to you be the best worker and employer and employee you can be. We're not saying to you that these things aren't important. What we're saying to you is they ought not be at the top of the list.
You need to take a very hard look at your life. I'll tell you something very beneficial—it's a list. You don't ever have to let anybody see it. Maybe it's just mental. I think it's helpful to write it down. That's the list of your top ten priorities, eight priorities. Don't do it for publication. Because if you do it for publication, it'll say God, this and that. I mean really. When you're there all by yourself, what are the top ten most important things to you? Order them as they're really important.
Then what do you think God's priorities are? Because if I'm a true Christian and a follower of Christ, and I love Him, then I'm going to want for me and for my world what He wants.
Understanding God's Priorities
Now I'll give you a tip. His priority is going to look something like this: His word, the gospel, His people, lost people. His number one desire for you is that you will obey Him. That's His number one desire for you—like the raven, who does what he's supposed to do.
What are you supposed to do? Well, to bring honor and glory to God and to enjoy Him forever. That's why you're here. Here's what God wants for you—one thing: obedience. If He says do it, do it. If He says stay away from it, stay away from it. Then let the chips fall wherever they fall.
It's a great scene in 1 Corinthians. The church at Corinth is just totally screwed up. Paul addresses them, the believers, but they've got all sorts of issues. One of them is some are following Paul, some are following a guy by the name of Apollos, some are following Peter. They're all messed up.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul addresses this and he says, "Listen, I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth." That's the way it is. Whether it's evangelism, there's nothing I can do. You can sit in a booth today with somebody who doesn't know Christ. You can lay all this thing out, but there's no way you can make them believe. You can't answer all their questions satisfactorily. You're never going to make them believe. That's God's job. God causes the growth.
We get this. Again, at summer camp, I mean, I hope you understand we could take these students over there and do a mind job on them pretty fast. I mean, we could use some—I could use some of the right video, some of the right music. I could have these girls crying and these guys going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." We could manipulate them into decisions all day.
Trusting God's Outcomes, Not Our Methods
Our desire in going to camp is not to see people converted by us. It's to hear the gospel proclaimed. If God uses it, terrific. That's our hope. He always has. We pray that He will. But if He doesn't, well, whatever. Our job is not to convert kids. Our job is to preach the gospel.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they're going into the fire. Classic moment. What do they say? Our God can save us. But even if He doesn't, that doesn't change anything. All it means is we're going to heaven faster. That's all it means. Listen, you get His priorities, and His priorities is for you to obey Him.
The Third Priority: Pray for God's Enablement
Here's the third thing. Pray for God's enablement. Don't be anxious for anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, you ought to communicate to Him. Prayer is open, honest prayer.
I have been doing a little inventory lately of my own life, and I've been trying to do it honestly without soliciting input from others right at this moment. Although, people are very free to tell me that, usually in email. And here's what I've decided is probably right now my overarching weakness, and that's prayer. I think when I pray, I do pray pretty well. But I just don't think it has the place it ought to have in my life.
Honest Communication with God
Prayer is open, honest communication. And I don't know—the last thing I'm going to do is put you down. But I'm with people all the time, and I assume they pray publicly one way and privately another way. But they pray publicly, they are there, and thou art those, and thine are these, and I'm going, Jesus, do you talk that way, really?
We were in a meeting a while ago. We were in a circle. And the guy said, let's pray around the circle, and I don't know, there's eight or ten of us. Let's pray around the circle. Tom, you close. Well, that's the worst spot, because you're last. All the good prayers are taken. If you're last, they've prayed for missions, they've prayed for the president, they've prayed for food, they've prayed for everything when it gets to me. So, there's a little comfort, because you just go, Father in heaven, I echo all that they've said, amen. And you're done.
How do you pray privately? There's a little acrostic, and I've always used it. I mean, it's nothing new. It's adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. It starts with the idea of adoration.
Finding God in the Secular World
We talked about this last week. I'm getting ready, as I mentioned to you, to go to Houston, and this is a totally secular gig, and one of the things I have to do is to send to their legal counsel my PowerPoint, because they've just got concerns, rightly so, apparently. So, I had a couple of things that I kind of put in there that, to me, I thought made sense, and they said, nope, nope.
Well, I'm going to talk about contentment, and I can help them realize how discontent they are, but I've got to give them a solution. So, I'm thinking, how do we do this? How do I get from here to there? And yet, I want to honor my host. You know, if I brought somebody in, and I tell them to do X, they better do X, because if they do Y, they'll never be back.
So, I included the Declaration of Independence. We find these truths, self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain abilities. No legal counsel could bounce out the Declaration of Independence. So, sure enough, it comes back, and the Declaration of Independence is in there.
Evidence of the Creator
So, now, here's where I go with them. I'll say this. We're endowed by our Creator. Now, this seems to be, it's self-evident, it says. It assumes the Creator. Now, we're going to disagree on who that Creator is, but do you see this? Because we've reached a point where probably many in the room miss this.
But here's my example. Last night, you went to dinner. We're at a beautiful place, and you went to Houstonian. It'd be a great place. We'll have a great place. Wish we could be there longer, except it's Houston. It'd be hot. And I said, you have this magnificent dinner, and you're done finishing. You're signing your MasterCard, and you're giving it to them, and you say to the waiter, my compliments to the chef.
Well, how'd you know there was a chef? Nobody's introduced you to the chef. You never met the chef. You didn't see the chef. You placed an order, and out the meal came. And that meal was obviously created by somebody, by a chef. My compliments to the chef, because the meal screams of the existence of the chef. And so, the sun and the moon and the stars scream of the evidence of the Creator.
Back to Prayer and Adoration
Very good. I got it. Now, I assume this is the only time I'll be before this group anyway. It's the same thing I tell Susan every time. Cash this baby fast. Just cash it and put it away. But you know, it forces me to go back and to say, you know what, this creation is an awesome thing. And when I think of His creation, I'm dwarfed by it.
And now I come to confession, that's me looking at my life. So you do pray that way?
God's Perfect Provision
I promise you this when you pray, God will always give you what you need. He may not always give you what you want. He'll always give you what you need. He may not give you what you want, for a variety of reasons. Maybe what you want is not best for you. He knows what's best for you. You may not really need what it is you're praying for. It may not be good for you.
You may be sitting there praying, God, give me this promotion. God, this is what I wanted. I want this promotion. I need this. This is what I need. And God's saying, you don't need this. All it's going to do now, they're going to—here you go. They're going to transfer you to Toledo, you idiot. You want to go to Toledo? Are you nuts? All of a sudden, you're going to stay here, but you're going to cover five states and you're never going to see your family? Does that make sense?
The Fourth Priority: Praise God's Faithfulness
Here's the fourth thing. Praise God's faithfulness. Don't be anxious for everything. It's Philippians 4:6. But pray about everything with thanksgiving. To be thankful, I have to stop at some place and take an
inventory of what God's done. Thanksgiving is linked to prayer. When I realize what God's done, I begin to understand who He is. All of a sudden, I see His faithfulness.
Remember what we're talking about? Anxiety. All of a sudden, the anxiety is gone because I'm reminded it all depends upon Him anyway. So why am I worried about all this?
The Peace That Transcends Understanding
Number five: "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding." The peace of God, which in a sense is beyond human comprehension. Maybe you've had that experience in your life where you're in the midst of some hurt and some pain and everybody's watching you go through it. They say, "I could never handle that. How can you handle that?" It's the peace of God that transcends human understanding because humanly, you couldn't.
Peace is not the absence of turmoil. It's the presence of God. Remember what we talked about? Circumstances are always going to go like this. Peace is not just getting circumstances flat like that. Peace is understanding the presence of God in the midst of all of this. It's not that God necessarily removes you from the fire. He joins you in the fire. There's a sense that He's there and a sense that He's in control.
We are at a point where we have homeland security and now it's a cabinet level. We have blue alerts and orange alerts and green alerts and all this stuff. I am not in any way diminishing those things. When we look at the Middle East and they're blowing each other up and we're looking all over, there's a sense and we start to think, "I think they're out of control." Well, things are beyond our control, but they're not out of God's control. So I rest in that. I find peace in the middle of that.
The World's Definition of Peace
The world will identify peace typically through the absence of adversity and the presence of stuff. One of my favorite illustrations - most of the kids I talk to know Freddie Prinze Jr., but they don't know his dad. Freddie Prinze Sr., when I was in high school and just out of high school, he was on the Tonight Show all the time and a funny guy. Remember he was on Chico and the Man with Jack Albertson? Funny guy. Puerto Rican kid, he's doing all of his stuff.
He goes from really this poor kid to now he's got everything. He's got a hit show. He's got everything he wanted. He goes home one day, puts a gun in his mouth, blows his brains out. How do you explain that? Because he had everything that probably a year before or two years before he said would bring him peace. See, there's something missing in the midst of this.
Some of the most frustrated people I know are the people who have everything. They've got everything and yet you can see it in their eyes. They're not happy. Why? You're never going to be happy with stuff.
Getting God's Perspective
Here's the last thing in the midst of adversity: get God's perspective. Psalm 39: "Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days. Let me know how fleeting life is."
I watched an interview the other day with a photographer who was taken in - he's the only photographer that was taken in by the NYPD and by the fire department to actually photograph Ground Zero and he's got incredible pictures. He's got a picture of a father who was, as I remember, a fireman who was holding the helmet of his son as they uncovered his body. It was a fireman killed there. He's got incredible pictures.
So they said to him, "What has this done for your life?" He said, "It's given me a whole new perspective. I'm patient with people. I'm kind to people. I don't get upset about things." Why? Well, because he came face to face and he got perspective.
By the way, that's not permanent. I think we've talked about it before. The Sunday after September 11th, the churches were filled and the NFL stadiums were empty. George Barna tells us and George Gallup as well now that church attendance is at or below September 11th. Why? Well, because when things are out of control, we know we need to grab hold of something. But once it's okay, "Give me that steering wheel back."
Life Goes By So Fast
Two weeks from tomorrow is the wedding. One of the things we're doing is that they're in the final part of getting together the stills to do the video. I cannot help but look at these pictures and just say, "There she was when she was a baby. I remember that picture was taken at the beach and I remember how fast we went to the beach. She wasn't even big enough to walk down because the weeds were this high. We couldn't even see her."
When they were small, I would get guys my age coming up and saying, "This goes so fast, this goes so fast." The other night we're trying to figure out what's the song that we're going to dance to. Here's what strikes me: Because I'm not a huge live in the past guy, what's striking me is not how fast the last 20 years went. It's how fast these next 20 are going to go.
My sense is, as I get older, the time is going faster and the days are going quicker. So if those last 20 from 32 to 52 went that fast, 52 to 72 must be a blur. And I'm there. Why do we have to wait for September 11th or to get to be 72 or for the doctor to say there's a spot on the x-ray before we understand this is temporary, that's eternal?
What in the world are you waiting for? Why do you have to go and see Ground Zero to understand life's passing away? In this middle of this life, when stuff's going all over, remember God's promises and pursue His priorities. Pray for His involvement. Praise Him for His faithfulness. You will experience His peace.
Embracing God's Eternal Perspective
This stuff is temporary. I think I go to the gym. I work out. I'm doing better at it. I try to eat correctly, but I don't operate under this illusion. I know this. I'm not going to live one second longer because I go to the gym. What I might do is increase the quality of life when I'm here. And even if I get extended, I can only extend it a year or two or five or 10. Say I get it to 100. Now, we're out of time.
The point is you're going to die, my friend. And you are a fool if you don't understand it and do something about it. And that's serious stuff.
Looking Ahead
We'll be here next week. How to stay afloat in a world that's circling the drain. If you think about it, and I don't do this hardly ever. If you think about it, you got to pray for us tonight, tomorrow morning. That's a big deal. Tomorrow morning, it's a small group, really important group. And we may make... God may use it to make a difference. And 500 kids for four days over in San Diego, pray for their safety. And pray that God uses that.
Father, we do. We come before You, and we praise You, and we worship You. We thank You. We love You because You first loved us. God, do great things in our life, not because we deserve it, not because we've earned it, not because we're worthy of it, because You're a great God. And we'll give You the honor and glory in Christ's name. Amen.