Getting Control Over Your Career
Tom Shrader exposes the futility of seeking fulfillment through career success, using Solomon's wisdom from Ecclesiastes to show how work can become obnoxious, motivation excessive, and achievement hollow. He demonstrates that true contentment comes only through fearing God and keeping His commandments, not through wealth, position, or accomplishments.
“When all has been heard, fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Getting Control (2004)
Recorded: 2004
Duration: 45 min
Themes: work, career, contentment, purpose, priorities, wisdom, fulfillment, balance, workaholic, burned out professional, climbing corporate ladder, career focused, struggling with priorities, middle aged adult, ambitious worker, feeling unfulfilled
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 12:13, 1 Timothy 6:6-7, Ecclesiastes 4:4, Ecclesiastes 5:12, Ecclesiastes 9:10, Ecclesiastes 5:10, Ecclesiastes 5:11, Ecclesiastes 9:11, Ecclesiastes 8:16-17
Theological Themes: ecclesiastes, vanity, fearing god, divine sovereignty, worldliness, eternal perspective, biblical wisdom, stewardship
Full Transcript
Session four of getting control of your life. Today we talk about getting control of your career and in a sense it pulls all these other things together. So you've got your outline. Let me help you fill this in and then we'll come back and just teach our way through it.
You've got four sections that you see. How do you know if you're out of control? What do you need to know? And in the third section, what do you need to do?
How Do You Know If You're Out of Control?
First of all, you no longer enjoy your job. Now, I'm not suggesting that every day you come in there's a piñata and you're throwing confetti. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying there's a sense of joy or satisfaction to that. So here's this job, this career, and you plan for it, you've prepared for it, you've studied for it, you've spent money to be trained in it, you've sacrificed for it. And you are right at the point where you would trade it this afternoon for two bleacher seats at a Diamondbacks game. Now, I know that's about as... I'm trying to think of something not worth much, so that's where I landed.
Second way: you no longer control your lifestyle. Everything is spilling over into everything else. Now, when I think lifestyle, I think financial, and we'll probably talk about some of that today, but work is spilling over into the areas of your life. Social is spilling over into work. All of a sudden, the lifestyle is out of control.
Here's the third thing. You no longer relish the position or promotion you expect. You no longer look forward to that promotion that's coming. It all of a sudden has become a burden. It's just part of what you have to do to kind of get up the corporate ladder.
I don't mean this in a chauvinistic way, but let's use a guy in this instance. The guy comes in and he calls his wife and he says, "You need to know we're moving to Duluth. That's just part of the deal. We don't have any choice in this. That's what we need to do. You settle everything here. Sell the house. Get the kids squared away. I'll go to Duluth. Get it set up." So he goes to Duluth. He's got that. She's in Kansas driving up, and he gets her on the cell phone and says, "The keys are under the mat—they just sent me to Memphis." All of that kind of a process, and we're seeing more and more people who are saying, "You know what? I don't want to go any further in the organization. I don't want to go to the next level." We're out of control. If all of a sudden you're saying, "Here comes this promotion, and I'm going to have to take it."
Here's the fourth thing. You're out of control if you no longer appreciate your life. Your role model would be Richard Kimball, the fugitive. He'd like to cut your hair, dye your hair, and just kind of drift away, fade into the crowd, and nobody ever find you again. You don't like your life.
Here'd be the last thing: if you no longer feel a sense of contentment. Now, I can't even say the word without digressing. You know, years ago, when I was talking to Larry, I was explaining to him a theory I have, and my theory is that if you pick the tape, and I don't care if it's Numbers chapter 3 verse 7—it doesn't matter. You pick whatever Larry's teaching, and in that 45 minutes, he'll make some reference to marriage, and that's almost universally true. There may be a time or two that's the exception, and he said, "Well, that's just what drives me. That's my thing."
The Missing Ingredient: Contentment
If you pick up my stuff over a period of time, a recurring theme that you will get is lack of contentment. I believe it's the missing ingredient in most people's lives. That if we could just get to the point where there's a sense of satisfaction. Now, there's a fine line there, isn't there? That contentment can move into apathy. We're not advocating that, or just some sort of ambivalence. I don't really care. I'm not advocating that.
I'm saying a sense of satisfaction with who you are, and what you have, and all that goes with it. And even there, we say, "Well, wait, am I not supposed to improve myself?" Yes, but you see the balance there? I'm not driven by these things.
I believe—this is just me—I believe it's the missing ingredient in most people's lives, especially Christians. And that's why I go back again and again to 1st Timothy 6, chapter 6, verse 6: "Godliness plus contentment is great gain. We came into the world with nothing. We leave with nothing. If we have food and covering with those, we'll be content." That little phrase in verse 7, "we came in with nothing, leave with nothing," is the absolute key to contentment. If you want to experience contentment, you have to understand the finiteness of life. You have to get an eternal perspective.
Solomon's Authority to Speak on Contentment
Now, having said all that, that's really what the rest of this day is about. If you have Bibles, and as you look at your outline here, you're going to see that we're going to spend the day in the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is written by Solomon. Solomon is one of those men, perhaps the only man, that God has ever allowed to live, who has enjoyed everything you think will make you happy. That's why Solomon has great authority.
We were talking with somebody yesterday about an area of endeavor, and they say, "You know, the guy who's counseling us, and the guy who's our consultant, couldn't do it on his own, and now he's our consultant. I don't know why we have him as a consultant if he couldn't do it on his own." Now, there's some sense to that, isn't there?
Well, Solomon is saying, "I want to talk to you about life, and I'll tell you my pedigree." And his pedigree is pretty impressive. He's arguably the wealthiest man that ever lived, as powerful as any man that ever lived. He dabbled with success in the arts. He was involved in agriculture. If you think sex will make you happy, he had—and I always get this mixed around—700 wives and 300 concubines.
The Authority of Solomon's Experience
Solomon speaks with authority about life's pursuits. He had 300 wives and 700 concubines - a thousand women there for one specific purpose: to satisfy his every need. He could have been with a different woman three times a day and not run through the whole group. My point to you is this: Solomon speaks with authority. If you're sitting there saying, "If I had this," Solomon's saying, "I had it, let me tell you." If you say, "If only I," Solomon responds, "I did, let me tell you."
At the end of it all, I'm going to give you the punchline to the whole lesson early. It's Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse 13. He said, "Here's the conclusion. Here's the whole deal. When all has been heard" - now I've experienced all this, I've done all this, I've been there. Whatever you bring to me, Solomon can say, "Been there, done that." Solomon said, "Here it is. When all is considered, here's the conclusion: Fear God and keep His commandments." Then he adds, "Because this applies to every person." There's no exception to this. That's mankind's condition.
If you want to have a fulfilled life, if you want to have a successful life - not in our economy, but in God's economy - then you need to fear Him. That means understand who He really is. Get your arms around that. And you need to do what He says. It's real simple.
I personally believe life isn't that tough. I personally believe things aren't that complicated or difficult. Some circumstances get complicated, and I acknowledge that, but generally speaking, life is pretty simple. Generally speaking, when you sit down with somebody, what needs to happen - especially, here's a key, especially if you aren't emotionally involved in it - it's pretty easy to dissect this stuff. The problem is doing it, and that's what he said. I need to know what to do: fear God and do it.
Four Things You Need to Know
On your outline, we're going to look now at the sections that remain. What do you need to know? I've got four points here. These are the big headings:
Number one: Work can become obnoxious.
Number two: Motivation can become excessive.
Number three: Achievement can become hollow or empty.
Number four: Results can become unpredictable.
Let's look at each one of those. That's what we need to know.
Work Can Become Obnoxious
Number one: work can become obnoxious. Here are two important points under that.
### It Can Ruin Your Day
First, it can ruin your day. Here's what Solomon writes: "What does a man get for all his toil and anxious striving with which he labors?" And here's the key phrase - if you're going to understand Ecclesiastes, you need to understand two phrases. Here's one of them: "for which he labors under the sun." When Solomon uses that phrase "under the sun," what he's talking about is life viewed and lived on a horizontal plane. This world. When I look at this world as it is, minus any sort of eternal perspective at all, what do I get for this?
"All his day, his work is pain and his work is grief." All of a sudden I've got work and it ruins my day.
### It Can Ruin Your Night
Here's the second thing: it can ruin your night. "Even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless."
So you're driving home and you're rehearsing or replaying the entire day. I'm in the middle of a big situation and I'm figuring it out or trying to figure it out. I find myself - I have a tendency to talk to myself when I'm in the car. I don't know if you do that. Those aren't stupid people who do that. That's generally brilliant people who do that. Mind is active.
So I'm talking, and coming over here today, I'm talking pretty full bore most of the way. I'm doing two things, and that's what he's saying. I'm replaying: "When he said this, I should have said this. When he came over here, I should have done this." And then I can't relax because once I've replayed it, now I'm rehearsing it: "When he says this, I'll say this. If he says this, I'll say this. Here's how this needs to go. When they move here..." It's as though life is one giant game of checkers or chess, and I'm anticipating. So my mind, my work, it won't let me rest.
Motivation Can Become Excessive
Here's the second point: motivation can become excessive. You may push to surpass. Listen to this from Ecclesiastes 4:4. I would suggest to you, especially since you're going to have some serious free time coming up, if you'd use the hour that you're going to be in here over these next few weeks and go back and take these verses with your Bible, mark them up, and go back to them again and again, it would be extraordinarily helpful to you.
Because this stuff - and I didn't say that in the introduction - you're not going to probably hear anything new in here today and you're going to go, "I know it's true, I know it's true, I know it's true." And yet there's this huge battle to do it. It's just the way we are.
Listen to this. This is great. Ecclesiastes 4:4: "When I saw that all labor and all achievement springs from man's envy of his neighbor, it too is meaningless." What he's talking about here is the phrase we would use: keeping up with the Joneses.
Now there are paraphrases of that. Larry Holmes, the former heavyweight champion of the world, probably a significantly underrated fighter just because of when he came along after Ali and everything, was born and raised - and I assume still lives, he certainly did then as champion - in Easton, Pennsylvania. Larry Holmes used to say, "In Easton, the Joneses keep up with the Holmeses."
So we'll play this any way you want. The image is this: I'm...
This is a great illustration. I had a guy come to our studies, and like some of you, he would drift in and out. Some of you are here every week, but some drift as life situations drift. That's okay. That's good. That's fine. That's not a condemning statement.
This guy comes in after I haven't seen him in a study for a while, and he looked incredible. He came up and I said, "Man, where have you been?" He said, "I just got started." I said, "You look incredible. You look awesome. Have you lost weight?" He said, "I've lost like 40 pounds." I said, "40 pounds?" He said, "Yeah." And he started to walk away.
I said, "Don't walk away. Come here. What did you do? Are you lifting weights? Look at you." He said, "Yeah, I'm lifting weights." I said, "You look unbelievable. Your hair is different, isn't it?" He said, "I've touched it up a little." I said, "Man alive. If I was a girl, I'd be going for you. You're incredible. You really look good. You're sharp. How'd you do it?" He said, "Well, I just ate less and exercised more." I said, "Oh, that seems simple. What was the motivation?" He said, "Well, next week, I'm going to my 25-year high school reunion."
Now, this is absolutely fascinating to me. The doctor could say, "You need to lose the weight," and you go, "Whatever. He's a doctor." But what actually moved him was envy of man's neighbor. He's going to walk in. He's going to saunter into that reunion and all I could think of is, there's some poor woman there who's going to fall for this guy. They are going to reconnect. A year later, she's going to wake up and look over and go, "Here's the before picture next to me. What happened? This guy - I want my money back. What happened there?"
Motivation Can Become Excessive
So all of a sudden, that's what happens. Motivation becomes excessive. You may push to stockpile, to store up. Again, I saw something meaningless under the sun. There was a man all alone. He didn't have a son or a brother. There was no end to his toil. Work, work, work, work, work. His eyes were not content with his wealth. "For whom am I toiling? And why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?" This too is miserable.
Here's that person, and you know them. They work, and they work, and they work, and they work, and they work, and they work, and they work. In this case, this guy's all alone. But he's saying, "It's not making me happy, and I've got nothing to do with it."
I love reruns. I like TV Land. It's interesting - I don't think there's a show on television now that is currently running that I really watch. I watch the reruns. Like, even something like Raymond, I watch the reruns. It's weird. So I watch a lot of reruns and old shows. I like that.
A couple of years ago, they were rerunning - and this is when you know you're desperate - they were rerunning Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I loved that show. I absolutely loved that show. But I got to tell you, if you want to have a blast, watch Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous reruns.
The one I saw - here you go, this is great - here's Yanni in his white suit, and he's not really much, and nobody knows who he is. But next to him is his main squeeze, Linda Evans. Linda Evans is obviously what's putting Yanni on the map. Here we go, and they're in the beach house, and they interview her. She said, "Oh, this is incredible. We've never been happier. We just gaze into each other's eyes, and we're so blissful. We could live like this forever." They show him walking down the beach, holding hands, and the dogs running along. He dumped her right after this was over.
It's Lance Armstrong. All-American boy. Go back and read the autobiography. Gets cancer. "My wife is there. She stood with me. I owe her everything." She's gone. Where's Sheryl Crow when I need her? It's just an incredible way we live. "If I have that, I'll be happy. Oh, they've done this, I'll be happy. If only..." And then He says, "No."
The Push to Survive
This is a great one. You may push to survive. Here's a great verse. I love this verse. Ecclesiastes 9:10: "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. For in the grave where you are going, there is neither working, nor planning, nor knowledge, nor wisdom."
Years ago, I saw a statistic. I'm sure it's not there anymore. I think it was about the late '80s, that the average male, once he retired and started to collect Social Security, collects Social Security for 22 months, and then they die. So here's this guy - all this time, I'm striving for this point.
I went back the other day. I used to have this website that I went to all the time. I'm sure some of you have been there. Remember the website deathclock.com? Remember Death Clock? Did you ever go to that? It's a great website. You ought to go there. If you haven't gone there, you ought to go. Deathclock.com.
What you do is you go in and you put some information in. Like, are you a male or a female? What day were you born? What year were you born? Then they ask for some information like height and weight. Then they ask like, what kind of disposition do you have? Are you optimistic, pessimistic, sadistic? Are you normal? You put it all in. Then you hit the button and it tells you what day you're going to die.
What's interesting - I did this six years ago. I did it again this week and both times it came up the same day: September 9th, 2023. Then you hit the button. Here's the best part. It flashes up how many seconds you have left to live and starts to count them down. So as you look at it, the other night I had 603,465,738 seconds. I look last night and you're watching this.
This used to be my screensaver. So every morning it would come up and the first thing I'd see was a skull and crossbones and this big number counting down. It was really valuable and I'll tell you why.
I remember this epiphany moment for me. I'm on the phone listening to this person drone on. I'm looking at this screensaver and I'm thinking, I'm dying here. I'm dying. This guy's yapping about something that I don't care about. Hurry up. Get to the point. I'm dying. It was really helpful. It's really important to understand that thing. It gives life a sense of urgency.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that life is this gigantic balancing act between tensions, between the urgency of the moment and yet a calmness and a relaxation of living. It's tense. You have to find that way of allowing that tension to exist. I love that. For in the grave where you are going, you are not the exception.
Achievement Can Become Hollow
Here you go. Achievement can become hollow. Three things. Number one, more profit doesn't satisfy. This is great. "Whoever loves money never has enough money. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. It's meaningless." I'm never going to reach that point where I have enough money.
We've talked about it before. I've seen two or three studies since then. It's all the same thing. You start to interview people. You ask them how much money would it take to make you happy. They generally go up one notch and say I'd be happy there. Then of course the irony is you interview the people that are there and they say it's one more notch. And it's one more notch. And it's one more notch. Here's what he's saying. If you say you love money, you never have enough.
Now I want you to see how subtle this is. Some of you say, well I don't think money is the answer. Have you ever had this situation? You see this couple. They've got this great house. They've got these great kids. They've got all this thing. They're vacationing in Maui. They've got all this stuff. And yet they're not happy. You're saying how can they not be happy? The minute you say that, you know what you're doing? You're basing that on an assumption that if I have all these things, I should be happy.
You got two things that work there. Number one, you have no idea what goes on behind closed doors. It shocks me how people interact with each other, treat with each other, and what goes on behind. You can't always tell it in public. Number two is that faulty assumption. That if I have this stuff, I'll be happy. If I could just make $700,000 a year, I'd be happy. I can introduce you to people who are making $700,000 a year and they're miserable.
You know, all this stuff gets hyped. I know that you're the exception, but it was even Elvis who said at the end of his life, "I'd give a million dollars for one day of peace." It's helpful to look at these people who, where the dog has caught the car, who are saying, look at me, I'm miserable. I know you're saying, well, I'm the exception. And maybe.
More Volume Doesn't Satisfy
Here's the second thing. More volume doesn't satisfy. This is kind of the sister of the other verse. If I love money, I never have enough. And this thing basically says, if I love stuff, I never have enough. "As goods increase, so do those who consume them. What benefit are they to the owner except to feast their eyes on them?"
Let me give you, you know, there's just certain illustrations that you come across that you use over and over. One of the most, and when we go to Houston or we go to wherever it is, and you go in and you do your deal, even if it's one deal or a week, it's okay because everything's new. When you're in the same group, week after week, we've been doing this now for 13 years, you've essentially heard everything I have to say five times. Some of these illustrations are so powerful, and yet I say, well, I don't want to use them, but yet they're great. This is one of those illustrations I love about getting stuff.
It's William Randolph Hearst. Wealthy guy, got mistress, wife, same old story, got all the stuff going on, trying to find a way to occupy himself, amusing himself to death. He gets into art. He becomes compulsive about art. He hires a curator to maintain the art of his castles and his office and everything. He becomes fixated on one piece of art. He sees this art in a catalog, he reads something about it on a book, and it just captures his imagination. The more he sees it, the more he wants it.
He calls the curator and he says, I need this piece of art. He said, I don't know anything about it. He said, well, find it. I don't care where you have to go, anywhere in the world, what you have to spend, find it and buy it. Because the implication is, when I got that piece of art, I'm going to be pretty happy.
The curator spends a significant amount of time traveling the world. He comes back, he says to Hearst, I can't find it. This thing, about ten years ago, just dropped off the face of the earth. We can't find it. He hires four to Texas. He sends them around the world. They're out there for six months. They're trying to track this down. They come back and they say, we can't find it. About ten years ago, this thing just fell off the face of the earth. He said, I got to have that piece of art. Back out you go.
They call him and they say, we got good news, we found it. He said, buy it. He said, we don't need to. It's in a crate in your basement. You already own it. Isn't that a great illustration? Oh, if I just had that piece of art, I'd be happy. Well, it's in the basement. What else do you got? See, if I love stuff, I'm never going to have enough. You know that. The minute you get that car that's going to make you happy, that thing, that house, that room. I was watching last night, Susan had on the end
The Myth of More Stuff
of Designer Challenge or something, and they took this house and made it beautiful. The homeowner's comment was, "We had the ugliest house on the block and you made it into the prettiest house on the block." I thought, isn't that incredible?
Then I got an idea for a TV show to follow up on Designer Challenge. Go back like two years later to see what the house really looks like and see if these two people are still satisfied with that house. I'll bet you'd find they've moved on up to the east side. That'd be my guess. More authority doesn't satisfy you.
This is terrific. More authority doesn't satisfy. Here's what you say: "I'm going to be my own boss. That's what I'm going to do." How great is this? Ecclesiastes 5:12 says, "The sleep of the laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of the rich man permits him no sleep."
The Laborer vs. The Owner
Here, let me say it another way. The preferred drink of the laborer is Diet Coke. The preferred drink of the owner is Maalox. You see it all the time.
I'm in a bookstore the other day, and I have a particular problem with this bookstore for three reasons. Number one, they did away with their biography section, which seems to me to be stupid. Number two, they're always poorly lit. And number three, they have awful, unclean restrooms. Having said all that, I'm in there.
I'm going to lay my soul bare here. I came across this book the other day. I am losing my manhood here. It had a foreword by Katie Couric. So I'm in real trouble here. Written by a lady about her experience with ALS. So I've got a chick book. It's designed to be a chick book. All the endorsements are by ladies. I don't know why, but I start reading this thing. And it's pretty good.
So I don't buy it. I go to a different bookstore a week later, and I say, "I'm looking for a book." She said, "Well, who's the author?" I said, "Well, I don't know the name." "What's the title?" "I don't know the title." She said, "Well, this is going to be difficult."
Customer Service Frustrations
I said, "I can get you close. I think the last name is like E-S-T-E-S. First name is like Janet or Jay, I don't know." She types it in. She goes, "No, there's nothing by that." "What's the title?" I said, "The word 'beds' is in the title or something." "It's not here."
I said, "All right, I understand that. I know it would be in a biography section if you had a biography section, but since you've done away with that, where do you think I might find it?" And she said, "Women's health." I said, "All right."
So now I'm over there, and the irony of this is not lost on me. I'm laughing as I'm thumbing through women's health saying, "Man, they have a lot of issues." I'm thumbing through women's health, and I can't find it. This girl's gone from the computer, so I thought, in a brazen moment, I'm going to commandeer her computer.
So I type in E-S-T-E-S, and it's not there. But if you push one arrow, you get E-S-T-E-S-S. There it is, right there. All she had to do was hit that arrow once.
The sleep of the laborer is sweet. Hey, he asked. He didn't know. He should have known the title. But customer service? That's what I saw. I said, "Customer service," and I thought, I didn't get much of that. But see, if I'm a laborer, it's whatever. But if I'm the boss, if I own this bookstore, I'd be out of my mind watching this stuff.
The False Promise of Success
And that's what He said. So here's what we're saying. If I have more money, if I get more stuff, if I'm my own boss, I'll be happy. And He says, no, that's not it at all.
So at this point, you're probably either frustrated or suicidal. Let's put you over the edge. This will drive you totally nuts.
Results Can Become Unpredictable
Point four: Results can become unpredictable. Ecclesiastes 9:11 says, "I have seen something else under the sun. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor food to the wise, nor wealth to the brilliant, nor favor to the learned, but time and chance happen to them all."
I learned that lesson at Turf Paradise years ago. The fastest horse does not win every race. It's very strange. Didn't you just see that in the Triple Crown? You turn on the Belmont. Here's Smarty Jones. He's at one to ten. They can't sniff Smarty Jones. And they're coming down the stretch, and they just go right by him. Isn't it amazing?
If you're a boxing guy, especially in boxing where you have guys fighting you don't know, two guys come into the ring, and you see this guy that's chiseled and strong, and you see the guy that's kind of round and soft, and you go, "He's going to kill him." And sure enough, the round soft guy has a little skill there. It's not just the strongest. And it's the same thing here with the wealthiest and the smartest.
Unexpected Success Stories
I'm watching Pinnacle. Remember the old CNN show where they interviewed these executives? This was a great one. They're talking to this guy who had an idea, and he couldn't get anybody to pick up on the idea. In 1990, he made 25 million dollars off each of the words in the title of his idea: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Here's the story. He goes to Hasbro and pitches it. Nobody wants it. Goes to Fisher-Price, goes all over the place. "I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't want it." He's watching his kids color in a coloring book, and he said, "You know what? I'm just going to design a coloring book with these turtles in it." And then it became a book. And then it became a video. Then it became Saturday morning cartoons. Then it became an infomercial.
Then it became a movie. In 1990, he made a hundred million dollars off Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that nobody wanted. So the guy's interviewing him. Here's the best moment - I love these moments. So they've got this guy there, and they say to him, how did you do that? How did you move from conception, to planning, to preparing, to manufacturing, to production, to distribution, to sales? How did you do that?
He said, "I don't know. No, I don't know." Well, there was a plan, wasn't there? "No, no. I made the coloring book, and then a guy said maybe he'd do a video."
We hate that, don't we? Because here's what we think: the smartest, the fastest, the sharpest - they ought to be the one that wins. Go through your office. This is an interesting thing. Walk through the office and go, "I'm smarter than her. I'm smarter than him. I'm smarter than her. Smarter than them. Smarter than them." You are, but why are you 22nd out of 24 in sales? Because there's not really necessarily a correlation between how smart you are and whether you're successful.
Here's what He says: "but time and chance happen to all."
Strong Assets Are No Guarantee
Here's the other thing - strong assets are no guarantee. Strong assets are no guarantee. Long hours are no guarantee. "Well, I may not be as smart as everybody else, but I'll just work harder. I'll just outwork them."
Ecclesiastes 8: "When I applied my mind to know wisdom and observe man's labor on earth, his eyes not sleeping, they are not. Then all I saw was what God had done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot comprehend it."
Here's what He's saying: you can say you're going to work and work and work and work and work, but there's something strange here. You can have all of the brilliance and all of the work. There are some very brilliant people - if you go to a Home Depot or a Lowe's or a Borders or a Barnes & Noble, there are some incredibly brilliant people working in there for just barely over minimum wage. Ultimately what He's saying is, forget all that. I want to understand the meaning of life.
The Search for Meaning
You go in - and this is a great time because I'm a bookstore guy anyway - but you go in the bookstore now and you'll see people coming out with armfuls of books because they're getting ready for vacation. You know, I've got five or six books that have been sitting there now for months gathering dust. They're getting ready for vacation, but more and more of them, even in the novels - certainly Rick Warren hit that nerve when he wrote The Purpose-Driven Life. More and more people are searching for meaning.
Here's what Solomon's saying. Solomon's saying you can search and search and search and search and search, but you're never going to understand the meaning until you come to a true knowledge of God and who He is.
A few years ago, I'm watching an interview with Madonna, and this is right after - remember, Madonna did this song. I don't remember what it was, but she does that song that the Catholic Church thought was sacrilegious and all that stuff, so they were going to throw her out. Well, they decide not to throw her out, and she just had her daughter baptized in the Catholic Church. She has since left that, and now she's into that kind of a hybrid of the modern Jewish thing.
He asked her, "Why do you want your daughter baptized in church? I mean, you obviously have problems with the church. They don't like you. They don't like what you stand for." She said, "Well, they have a lot of really good things, and all religions have a lot of really good things. There's the Golden Rule. There's the Ten Commandments."
The Wisdom of Our Day Is Wrong
Here's what Solomon's saying. Solomon's saying that the wisdom of our day is not right. Our day says it doesn't matter - it just matters that you pray. It doesn't matter who you're praying to. Or it just matters that you believe. It doesn't matter, really, what you believe. Here's a big one: it just matters that you behave morally. It doesn't matter why.
That's a huge deal, because we can go in and we can take a guy that's drunk - we've talked about this before - and we can get him sober. But if he dies in that condition apart from Christ, he's just sober for all eternity in hell. There's a very big difference here, and you're never going to understand.
Here's what Solomon says. Solomon said there's a fundamental problem with man. It's his heart. He's a sinner. Here's the deal: He said, "When all is said and done, I want you to fear God and keep His commandments." If you're going to fear God, you have to know who He is. If you're going to know who God is, there's only one place you're going to discover it, and it's right in this book. You're not going to figure it out anywhere else. Everything else is speculation. Everything else is a guess. Here's the authoritative word. That's what Solomon's saying.
How to Find Control
So how do you do this? How do you find control? What do you need to do? Five things here. Let me give them to you very quickly.
Number one: enjoy a simple lifestyle. There is a huge push - if you watch contemporary literature publication at all, there's a huge push toward this simplified life. You know, getting rid of the car and going back to a Jeep. Now, it's a little ironic. It's a wood panel Jeep with a DVD and a CD player, but it's a simpler life. We don't want it too simple, you know. Let's return to that.
Jim Elliot. Remember Jim Elliot? Died in 1956 as a young man with all sorts of potential. On his very first excursion into reaching an unreached Indian tribe in South America, he's killed. If you want to read a pretty interesting book, there's a book called Shadow of the Almighty, which is a compilation of his diary and letters that he wrote to his eventual lady who became his wife, Elizabeth Elliot.
In there at age 21, he's trying to figure out whether to get married or not. Here's what he writes. He said, here's the problem. With a wife comes Peter the Pumpkin Eater's proverbial dilemma. He must find a place to keep her. So a wife needs a house, and house need curtains, and a house with curtains and carpets soon needs a home, which need kids, which need a car, which needs land, which needs a garage, which needs to be cleaned.
And then he says this. This is a great phrase. As needs are met, they multiply. This is a 21-year-old guy figuring this out on his own. It's the antithesis of what we say. We say, here's a need, I meet it, it's done. No. Here's a need. I need a place to sleep. I need a place to live, but once I have this place to live, I have to find a bed. Bed needs sheets. Sheets need to be cleaned. I need a washing machine. It's endless, and that's very important. It is pretty difficult to grab, to endorse, to keep this life.
The Endless Cycle of Material Needs
Give me two minutes here. We had a guy in one of the studies, and I just met him. It's he and his wife. They live alone, don't have any kids, and they have a house. It's a big house, 5,000 square feet. That's a big house to me, but I'm not making value judgments here. If you feel condemned by that, you got issues. I'm not making a judgment. 5,000 square feet—that's 2,500 feet per person. That's a lot of footage.
So I said to him, that seems like a big house, and he said, well, it is a big house. And I said, how did you decide to buy that size of house? And listen to this. He said, well, we're in a cooking club, and there's a couple of us, and we cook, we rotate, and we go to somebody's house, and we prepare this dinner, and we eat it. So I need a certain kitchen, and the kitchen I need comes in a 5,000 square foot house.
And I'm okay with that. I'm not making any judgment, but I'm saying, think of what that costs you. All those extra bedrooms, all that property tax, all that air conditioning, all that furniture, all that cleaning, all that aggravation.
Enjoying Your Productive Labor
Here's the second thing. Enjoy your productive labor. Find satisfaction in your toilsome labor. Every once in a while, somebody will say, well, work is part of the curse. Work is not part of the curse. Work was given to man in Genesis 2. The curse comes in Genesis 3. We're designed to work. You're supposed to work.
It may not always be for a check, and here, let me take you off the hook here. That's okay, but you should be engaged. You should be working. You were not designed to just sit and watch.
Enjoying Your Divine Allotment
Let me give you three, four, and five all together, and then tie them together, and we're done. Enjoy the human condition. Enjoy your human condition. Said another way, enjoy your divine allotment. Said another way, enjoy your consistent preoccupation. In other words, God's given you X, and He's blessed you with X, and He didn't give you a Y, and you don't need to spend the rest of your life talking about the things you didn't get.
It's like right now. I can predict this conversation today. You're going to go downtown. You'll be in an elevator with somebody. You're going to look at them, and you're going to go, hot out there, isn't it? There you go. It's July 22nd, and we're living in hell here. We live in a desert, and there you go. I'm going to go out on a limb. It's going to be hot another month, and next year on July 22nd, it's going to be hot. Talking about that doesn't help.
There's a guy by the name of Fred Smith. I assume Fred is dead. I don't know. He used to be a very popular speaker when I became a Christian years ago, and he had a bad arm, and that arm just hung. It just hung like this, and people used to come up to him and say, that's too bad about your problem. He'd say, what are you talking about? Your problem. He'd go like this. He'd go, this? That's not a problem. That's a fact of life. That's the way it is.
Accepting Facts of Life
There's a sense of joy in life. You can't change certain things. Look, I would love to be—I was standing talking to somebody the other day, and I was standing up like this, like on the second stair, and they were on the floor, and we were eye to eye, and I thought, you know what? That'd be kind of cool. That would be pretty cool. I would love to be six foot four. It isn't going to happen. There's nothing I can do. I can control my girth, and I don't even do that very well.
That's what he's saying here. God's given you this, and I can become so obsessed with what I don't have that I don't enjoy what I do. It's like kids at Christmas. You watch them? They rip it open. Thank you very much. They rip the next one open. Thank you very much. They rip the next one open. Thank you very much. It drives you nuts as a parent, doesn't it? It drives you crazy. You've given them all this. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
And then one day, Christmas afternoon, one Christmas, I'm sitting there, and I'm thinking, that's the way I am with God. I rip it open. Oh, a new house. Thank you. A job. Thank you. Health. Thank you. Kids. Thank you. When I've got that attitude where it's on to the next deal, on to the next deal, on to the next deal, we've got to go.
The Missing Element of Thanksgiving
The missing thing that you're going to find in your life is thanksgiving. There'll be no sense of thanksgiving. It'll be, thank you. It's like the kids. We've got little kids, and we're in training. That's how you train them. But there are like little kids that are like little robots in our church, and they'll just come up and they'll go, hello, Mr. Schrader. Thank you for that nice message. And then they'll walk away. They don't have the foggiest idea what took place. And I understand. We're training them. I got that figured out. But they don't know.
We're like that. Thank you, God. That was really great. What else you got? Anything over there? Boy, I want one of those. So Solomon's saying, listen, get control of your life. And part of it is just simply understanding this principle.
Understanding God and His Ways
God and who He is and how He works. We went long. Thanks for cutting me the slack.
Father, thank you for this truth.