Living to Win Over Weakness
Tom Shrader examines the Christian's struggle with sin using Paul's testimony in Romans 7, where the apostle describes the internal battle between flesh and spirit. He outlines six practical steps for winning over weakness: committing to give the struggle proper attention, finding cheerleaders and trainers for support, doing and saying the right things, understanding that growth involves discipline and pain, and ultimately trusting God's Word and promises through the process.
“We do what's right because it's right until it feels right.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Living to Win (2005)
Recorded: March 31, 2005
Duration: 44 min
Themes: sin, struggle, weakness, temptation, victory, discipline, growth, support, struggling with sin, feeling defeated, new believer, christian struggling, needing accountability, seeking spiritual growth, battling temptation, mentor
Scripture: Romans 7:15-24, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Ephesians 3:14-19, 2 Thessalonians 3:16, Hebrews 12:11-12, Galatians 5:22-23, 1 Peter 5:10, John 14:6
Theological Themes: sanctification, flesh, spiritual warfare, romans seven, inner man, biblical counseling, christian living, progressive sanctification
Full Transcript
Today, week two, you have outlines in front of you in a series titled Living to Win. Let me give you the topics again: winning over guilt was last week, today winning over weakness, then anxiety, fear, worthlessness, loneliness, stress, and uncertainty. Those are the eight topics for the weeks we're together.
The subtitle of this series is Identifying and Unraveling the Entanglements of Life. The premise is twofold. One, these are the things that come along virtually in everyone's life. You may be sitting here today and say, "In my life, I have no anxiety right now." I can tell you that will pass, and that's coming. You just need to be ready for it.
One thing I see about this list of eight things is that there are not a lot of laughs in there. This isn't really a funny series, and some of you are so used to the wit and charm and humor that goes with this on a regular basis. That's missing for the next eight weeks. The second thing is the universal application of this stuff. These are just things that you experience, I experience, we experience in our life. How do we approach these things?
The Christian's Struggle with Sin
When we're talking about weakness, what I want to talk about is the weakness that's accompanied by the struggle that we have as Christians—it's the struggle with sin. So if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, there's a sense in which this really isn't going to apply to you, because there really isn't a struggle for you. You just sin, and that's what the Scripture says. The Scripture just says there's no one good, no not one, and you sin. You may struggle with some guilt, but you push it aside, and then you form a God, typically in your own image, and that's what you worship.
But if you're a Christian, there's a struggle. Paul talks about it. And when we talk about Paul, we're talking about kind of a giant of the faith, I'd say.
Here's what he writes in Romans 7: "For that which I'm doing, I don't understand, for I'm not practicing what I want to do, but I'm doing the very thing that I hate. If I do the very thing that I do not wish to do, I agree with the law, confessing that it's not good. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh."
Paul's Vivid Picture of Internal War
Then Paul goes on, talking about the struggle. He said, "For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members." And then he's talking about this whole struggle.
Listen to the picture here: "Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from this body of death?" Now as you read that, you go, "Oh, that's really strong." Let me give you the imagery he's using here, because it's really powerful.
In Paul's day and age, if I killed—and it's always tempting—if I killed Kate, and I'm found guilty, and they decide they're going to kill me, there's a variety of ways that they could do it. They would take you out and they would stone you. Or they would take you out and cut your head off. Or they'd crucify you. Another way that they would kill you would be to take the corpse of the guy you killed and then attach Him to your body. They'd tie Him onto you. So everywhere that you went, as His body's decaying, as the bugs and the animals are coming in and they're beginning to do their work on His body, they just move from His dead body into my live body.
Now listen to what he says: "Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from this body of death?" You see the picture? It's much more powerful now. Here's Paul saying there is this giant struggle within me. And there's a sense here of hyperbole, but it's reality at the same time. I don't do the things I want to do, and I'm doing the things I don't want to do. There is this giant struggle within me, within you.
The Paradox of Growing Closer to God
And the more we grow closer to our Lord—and this is to me the ironic part of the whole thing—the closer I grow to Him, the more the struggle intensifies. There's a sense, now you've got to listen closely here, there's a sense in which at that moment I'm converted is about the holiest I'm ever going to feel. Because from that moment on, God's Spirit gradually reveals to me more and more and more and more of the sin in my life. And though it's not true, but my understanding perceives it this way, the gap between God and me seems to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
So I reach the point, I am selfishly ready to die, and I'm embarrassed to say, not that I want to go and be with my Savior, though that would be great, I would just love to get out of this world and the things that make me sick, and particularly my own sin. Which shows how selfish I am, and how sinful I am, because I don't even want to die and be with Him for the right reason. That's a sad thing, isn't it?
The Danger of Self-Deception
But we like to deceive ourselves sometimes and play this game. I remember Larry telling this story, the guy that came up to Him, and he's talking to Him, and he said, "Larry, we were talking back and forth, he said, 'I haven't sinned in three years. And I have to confess to you, there was a time, I did sin once in the last three years.'" And Larry said, "Really? You haven't sinned in three years? I haven't sinned in three years." And he said, "I'd love to talk to your wife about it. I think it would be interesting to get her perspective on what it must be like to live with this perfect man, this perfect person."
Six months later, he was divorced. So my sense is, there probably was a little bit of sin, and maybe he deceived himself just a little bit.
So you get the struggle. Here's what I want you to see: this is the norm. This is normal. Years ago, I had somebody come up to me and said, "I'm not living the victorious Christian life." I said, "What is it?" And the guy's response was, "I don't know, but I'm not living it." Well, if you don't know what it is, I guarantee you
We aren't living it. Sometimes we have this caricature that as I go through life, things get easy, better. All of a sudden, I don't sin anymore. All those struggles will go away. They don't go away. They only intensify.
So that's what we're starting with. That's the struggle we're talking about. We're talking about the weakness of our sin in our life, the desire that we have, the struggle that we have between trying to be the man or woman God would have us to be, and struggling with this whole area of our flesh.
You and I come into the world consumed with one thing. That's our self. I want what I want when I want it. Two kids - you don't even need to teach it. All you have to do is go over to the nursery and watch it. You put two kids down. You have a kid with four toys. Another kid's got one toy. Pretty soon, it's mine, mine, mine, me, me, me. That's just the way it is, and it's been that way all along.
The Christian's Positional vs. Practical Reality
There's sin in my life. All of a sudden now, and it's really important to understand, we're talking about Christians now. All of a sudden now, God saves me. All of a sudden now, I am righteous in His eyes.
I said to somebody a couple weeks ago, "How are you doing?" Here's what he said: "Positionally well, practically not so well." So what he's saying is, in my relationship with the Lord, my position before Him, He's declared me righteous. I'm doing great there. Now the rest of life - that's not so hot, and this is a bit of a struggle. In there lies that struggle.
It's that struggle between the old man, the flesh, the desires. It's the world and the world system that presses in around us. It's the demons. I doubt any of you have ever really struggled with Satan. Satan is a created being. He's finite. He's not omnipresent, and probably not a big enough fish in this room to fry for Satan to mess around with you. But he probably doesn't even need to. He's got little demons, and he's got our own flesh that will handle that.
That's the struggle he's talking about. We look past the outward side - that's what man looks at. We look at the heart - that's what God's looking for. Here's the struggle between our own sensuality and greed and pride, and then the desire that we have, as a man and woman of God, to be the person that God wants me to be, to live for His honor, to live for His glory.
Six Steps to Victory
So in this whole process, six steps. You got them in front of you. We don't even need twelve steps for this one. Six steps.
Number one: commit to give it the attention it deserves. The "it" there is the struggle in this process.
The Reality of Decay and Renewal
2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 16, and verse 18. It's a passage that if you aren't there a lot, you should be. You should be going back to this again and again and again and again and again. This is one of those passages that unlocks a lot of things in our mind.
Here's what Paul writes: "We don't lose heart. Though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day." So he starts with this premise: we don't give up. Why? Well, he's going to tell us in a minute, but he first sets the table for the discussion.
The outer man is decaying. It's falling apart. Literally, from the moment of birth, we begin the process of deterioration and dying. Years ago - well, not even years ago, twelve years ago now - the guy that's my eye doctor gets the tapes. One day, he calls and says, "You need to get in here and get your eyes checked."
I said, "How can you tell that from a tape? I don't understand how you can listen to tape and tell if my eyes are bad." He said, "Just get in here." So I go in, and I said, "How can you tell from the tape?" He said, "Let's just do the test." So I go through the test. Sure enough, I need bifocals. Sure enough, I'm having problems reading.
I said, "How can you tell that from the tape?" He said, "I can't. But on the tape, you said you're 43, and at 43, that's when those eyes go." Isn't that amazing? How predictable that is? Other variations, sure there are. But not many. It's pretty true. Between 41 and 45, all of a sudden, we've got all these people looking like this, and now it's all over.
The outer man is decaying. There's evidence around this all the time, each and every morning. Each and every morning, right in my bathroom is a full-length mirror. Every day, my first thought is, "The outer man is decaying. Look at how pathetic this is." But the inner man is being renewed day by day.
A Different Economic View
Now, verse 17 is really important: "For momentary light affliction" - and that's the hassle of this world - "is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." And He says, here's the key here. Here's what we've got to understand: "We fix our eyes not on the things that are seen, but on the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are temporary, the things that are unseen are eternal."
Here's what I've got to do. All of a sudden, I have to start living with a different economic view. By economic view, I mean economy of thoughts. The world around me says, "Look at this, watch this, think like this. This is important. This is what you need."
We've got a thing going on in our church right now that's fascinating to me. I've just started to address it in some of these meetings. We have a map now, and we're working on what we're going to do the next five, ten years. We've got a map, a big old map. On this map is a dot for where every person lives. But the dots are way different than they
were three or four years ago. We're up in here, and all these dots are way out here. We've got all these dots that are a half hour or 45 minutes away, further south. And I'm saying, wait a minute. How can this be? What is going on?
And they said, here's what's happening, Tom. People are moving out there because they can get another bedroom or two. They can get more house. They can get more house if they go. And I said, whoa. That's what's happening? Yeah. I'll deal with this.
So I started it yesterday. Let me tell you, that is absolutely stupid. That is so stupid to take yourself and add another half hour or 45 minutes to your commute every day. So an hour to an hour and a half a day more in the car. And I'm telling you something. I can't handle it. I don't know how you are.
And I don't drive much. I got a car almost four years old. I got 30,000 miles on it. So I'm not out much. I live my life kind of in one area. And a lot of those miles are going to Flagstaff and Coronado. So I don't get out much.
But when I'm out, I can't handle here. I got stuck here, oh, I don't know, three or four weeks ago. And I'm going back. And I'm on the freeway. And I'm saying, I can't deal with this. So I get off. And I'm going through the reservation. Well, I didn't understand how bad that is. And I'm lost in there. I'm at every stoplight. I'm backed up in Mesa. I just said, OK. I'm going down a side street. I got down a side street. Literally, it took me an hour and a half. And a lot of that I did myself.
You now are voluntarily leaving this to add another hour every day to your life? For 500 square feet? Are you nuts? And that's absolutely true. For another bedroom? We had another child. We had another bedroom. Here's a revolutionary thought. Put the kid in with one of the other kids. He doesn't need his own bedroom. They don't need their own space.
But if I'm evaluating all my life by all this stuff that's around here, and all of a sudden, and here's my thing. And bigger than anything else, especially the women, guys too, but especially the women, you have all this infrastructure, relationships here, you're moving out here. And it's like you're signing little high school yearbooks. Friends forever. You're not going to be. You're 45 minutes away. You aren't going to hang out and drink coffee today. You aren't just going to stop over. The kids aren't just going to go to the park. And you talk where all the cool stuff is. It's not going to happen. And you are nuts to mortgage that for 500 square feet that is stuck on stupid. And you're going to end up with all sorts of problems and all sorts of issues.
The Danger of Focusing on Temporary Things
But see, here's what happens. If I'm thinking about the things that are seen, and I'm not thinking about the things that are unseen, then my house and how it's decorated and what I drive and what I wear and how I live and how I look, that becomes supremely important.
And here's what the Bible says. Every time we invest in this world, we're buying a stock that's a guaranteed loser. Every time I invest in this world, I in my day have had different guys come to me and say, you need to invest in this, and you need to invest in this, and you need to invest in this. And they'll all say, here's the investment. Here's the upside. Always some risk, but here's the upside. Here's the upside. Here's the potential. Can you see this? Here's the return. It's from the numbers. It looks good.
I've never had anybody come to me and say, we got this stock. It's a dog. It's a loser. Not only are you going to make no money, you'll lose all your investment as well. Although I bought two of those. My day. That's what the world does every time. The world comes and says, buy another 500 square feet. Forget the fact it's going to cost you a billion dollars over 30 years. It's going to cost you relationships. The guys commuting are now angry and frustrated. You don't have any time for each other. You'll be miserable. Buy it. And they buy it, and they don't even think about it.
So the first thing I got to do is I got to commit to this idea that in this struggle, it's important. It's worthwhile. It's valuable.
You Need a Cheerleader and a Trainer
Here's the second thing. And I'm going to take point two and three and combine them. Number two, you need somebody to cheer you on. You need a cheerleader. Not to blow smoke at you, but to cheer you on and say, hang in there. And then you need a trainer. You need somebody to develop you.
Here's what Paul says in Ephesians 3. And if you look at those references, one's from the book of Ephesians, one's from the book of 2 Thessalonians. To the church at Ephesus, Paul had a very different relationship than the church at Thessalonica. At Ephesus, Paul had actually been in this church for three years. He had deep, intimate relationships with these people. He loved this church. I'll tell you how much he loved them. He took the best guy he had and left them there to run it, Timothy. Thessalonica, he'd been there three weeks. But he says essentially the same thing to both of them.
To the church at Ephesus, he said this, "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom all family on heaven and earth derive its glory, its name, and I pray." He says it then again in verse 18, "I pray that you'd have power." That's Paul's way of saying, here's how I'm really cheering for you. I'm trying to give you something that's more valuable than anything. I'm cheering for you. I'm praying. I'm praying. I'm praying.
One of our staff guys was at Costco the other day and checking out. So they had the church Costco card. And the gal that's checking him out says, are you on staff at East Valley Bible Church? And he said, yes. And she said, I want you to know, I'm praying for that pastor's wife every day. And she said, would you, and the guy said, do you know Tom? No. Do you know his wife? No. Never met him. I don't know why he likes people in life. I just know that there's some issues there and I've been praying for them every day. And I'm telling you,
We hear that everywhere we go. You need somebody to pray for you. Somebody to say, hang in there. Somebody to say, keep it up. Somebody to say, it's worth it. It's okay to say it's tough. There's nothing wrong with saying it's tough.
I was at a funeral on Tuesday for a 19-year-old boy under the worst circumstances—drug overdose, lots of problems. There were all these kids there and they had no box to put this in. There was a kid, he was kind of a studly kid, he was a big kid, and I didn't do the funeral. I was just there to help. These kids were crying so hard, so I'm getting boxes of Kleenexes for them. This great big kid just wasn't coping very well with this. Finally he got up and went into the bathroom.
So I followed him to the bathroom. He was leaning against the wall and crying. I'd never seen this kid in my life, and I was just holding on to him. He was just heaving and sighing, weeping. I said to him, "Hey, this sucks. This stinks. This is awful. But don't let the moment pass you by. This is an important moment to think this stuff through. You're a smart kid and you'll figure this out. You need to think this through. You need somebody around you."
Now you need that not just from a stranger. You need somebody around you to encourage you.
The Need for a Trainer
You need the second part of this: you need a trainer. If I were a player for the Phoenix Suns, which doesn't seem likely, but if I were a player for the Phoenix Suns, I'd have all the infrastructure. I'd have a head coach. I'd have an assistant coach. I'd probably have a position coach. I'd have a fitness trainer. I'd have a strength coach. I'd have a nutritionist.
In the old days—I don't know if they do it now—but in the old days, when they brought a kid in and put him on a ball club, they'd sit him down. The guys responsible for security would say, "Here's a strip club and here's a strip club and here's a strip club and here's a bar and here's a bar and here's a bar. They're selling cocaine here and the hookers are here. Stay out of there because you're going to get in trouble."
And we're not even done. The league's going to send somebody in and the league's going to say, "You guys need to get your finances together and you need to understand about drugs. You got people coming at you all over the place." And this is about taking a ball and putting it in a hoop. You don't think you need that same kind of intensive preparation in your own life? You do. You need people around you.
Mentors and Protégés
Here are the terms we might use: you're going to need mentors and protégés. I want you to think with me for a second because this is really important. Let's say in this room, for sake of discussion, though the number is low, let's say there are a hundred people in this room. Let's say you are smack-dead average. You just say, "Nothing special, I'm average." You're 50. One to a hundred, you're 50.
That means there are 51 through 100 that are more skilled than you in whatever we're talking about. But one through 49 are less skilled than you. You need to be in a position where you are finding somebody who's more skilled than you and suck them dry. Get everything you can out of them. Just suck it right out of them. Then turn around and find somebody down here, one through 49, that you're pouring into.
You absolutely, desperately need this in every area of your life. Some of it you can get—I get a lot. I read a lot of biographies. I love to read that. You get preaching from Scripture. But you need one-on-one. You need people around you. There are opportunities everywhere.
The Pattern of Poor Decisions
We're talking in a spiritual context. It's just like, to me, these kids that are making these moves for 500 square feet—though they wouldn't listen probably—it would be good if at least somebody said, "Have you thought about?" It's these big issues in life. Virtually everybody that comes in and talks to us that says we have a problem, it's a series of one stupid decision after another stupid decision after another stupid decision after another stupid decision. They just unfold from one thing to the other.
Somebody needs to be in your life, because you can't always see it. Sometimes you're so close to it, you don't see it. You need somebody to say, "Wait a minute, hey, hey, hey, stop and think about this."
This is where I got a call Tuesday from a guy. He said, "Listen, I got a voicemail. I'm going to be here until 4 o'clock. If you can call me back, that would be great, because I need some advice." I called him back. He ran by me two or three things. He said, "Here's what I'm planning on doing. Would you do it?" I said, "No, I wouldn't do it." He said, "Why?" I said, "This, this, this, and this." He said, "Perfect. I'm not doing it. That makes sense. I didn't see it."
That's what you need in your life. It's not that I'm so smart. I've just made a lot of those mistakes that he's about to make.
Big Things and Little Things
It's big things. It's little things. I'm at church, and there's this lady who has a baby. I don't know why people think if they have babies and shake them, they quit. I don't understand that. She's got this little kid. When Susan and I had kids, we didn't know anything. But we learned something.
She's got this little kid, and this kid's kind of fussy. He's kind of a cute little kid. I'm watching his head, and he's just kind of bobbing around in the back. I'm thinking, well, maybe I could give... I said, "Could you care if I hold him?" She said, "Sure, go ahead." So I take the kid. She said, "He's really hard to burp. I can't get him to burp very well."
I said, "Really? Well, when I had kids, here's how I would burp them, because I didn't like them on my shoulder. I would always get him on my knee and kind of lean him forward right like this. Then I'd pat..."
him on the back. I said, "Do you care if I do that?" No. So I take the kid. I go like this. And I go, boom, boom. And it sounds like the exorcist. He had 15 days of gas built up in this kid, just blowing out of him.
Now initially, you'd think the mother would be relieved, but I could see she was troubled by it. And then I quickly understood what she was thinking. She's thinking, "I don't even know how to burp a kid." And I said, "You know what? Do you have a mom around?" No. "Do you have anybody helping you with this?" No. I said, "Let me get you one of the gals, and you can hook up with them. And they can help you with a lot of this stuff, because I don't know any of this. I just learned it by just kind of screwing up a lot. And so you don't have to screw up. Somebody can teach you."
You've got to have this going on in your life. There has to be somebody who is providing you, living in your life as a mentor, somebody as a protege.
Start Doing and Saying the Right Things
Here's the fourth thing. Start doing and saying the right things. Again, Paul's writing to Thessalonica, to the church there. "May the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and the God our Father, who loves us and by His grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your heart and strengthen you in every good work and deed." So I'm saying and I'm doing the right thing. You need to start doing the right thing.
And for most of you, here you go, for most of you, it's not a matter of knowledge. It's a matter of doing. There's a huge difference between joining a gym and going to the gym. There's just a big difference.
Most of you, if I said, and it happens all the time, I'm no great counselor, you know, I'm just not. So if somebody comes in to me and you say, "I've got this problem," I'll go, "Oh wow, what is it?" And they'll lay it out and go, "Oh man, that's terrible. Whew, that's a tough one. What do you think you should do?" "Well, I think I should do this." "Well what about that?" "Well, I should do that." "Well, I should do this." Well, at the end of the day, all I've got to say is, "Well, why don't you go do what you already know?"
We had a guy and his wife, they got major problems. And I said, "Why don't you come in and see me?" And he said, "My wife won't come." I said, "Well, why is that?" And he said, "She knows what you're going to say." And that's what would happen all the time.
I'm telling you, you would be stunned at how often you sit down with somebody and they would start the discussion with this. "I know it's wrong, but..." "I know it's wrong, but..." "I know it's wrong, but I'm leaving." "I know it's wrong, but I'm involved in this." "I know it's wrong, but..." Well, here you go. Stop it.
We do what's right because it's right. It may not even feel right. It may not even be, honestly, what you really want to do. You'd rather go do this. But we do what's right because it's right until it feels right. We do it because it is right. You've got these things that are present in your life and you have to be about those things.
Understanding Pain and Discipline
Here's the fifth step. Hebrews 12: "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it's painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness, a great yield of righteousness, and peace for those who've been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and your weak knees."
Here's what you need to understand. In this process of struggle, and it's so trite and it's been so trivialized by the world we live in, but it's a really important phrase: no pain, no gain. In your life, there'll be discipline, there'll be suffering, there'll be pain. Let's sort it out for a second.
In your life, you're going to do things that are wrong, sinful, bad choices, and when you do it, you're going to have consequences. When you make bad decision after bad decision after bad decision, sin after sin after sin, there's consequences to that. Life is going to come around and smack you in the head.
Now there's suffering too, and some of suffering is just part of life itself. Some of suffering is just the wear and tear of living. If you're a 19-year-old who's overdosed on drugs, think of the pain, and I don't have to imagine it because I watch it, think of the pain to the mom and the dad who are there. And to all these kids who are suffering, why? Because of somebody else's sin.
We're going to suffer for a variety of reasons. We have an enemy, Satan, His demons. We have the flesh, and that's a struggle. We live in a world system that's contrary to what we think and what we believe.
The Battle Against Cultural Pressures
I'm watching Oprah yesterday, and Oprah, you know what it was yesterday, because you had Serena and Venus Williams, and I love the Williams sisters. And the last time they were on Oprah, they were talking about, Oprah said, "Now tell me about how you work out." And they said, "We don't work out." And they said, "Well tell me about your diet and how you eat or where you eat or what happens." And they said, "We eat pretty much at McDonald's." Very discouraging.
So the Williams sisters are on, so I'm waiting, well the whole show is about teenage girls. So I didn't hang in very long. But they got a little girl, 16, she slept with 8 guys, she's there saying, "I need help." Got a 15 year old, she's had a bunch of plastic surgery. So there's all those things. There's all those identities. And they're huge real problems.
These are young girls, they're battling a perception that's out there. They want to be cute, they want to be sexy. There was a, whoever's married to Will Smith, I don't know who that is, she's on the show and she said, "You know, my 5 year old came in the other day and said, 'Mom, is this sexy?'" So she said, "That's all that's out there." And I understand all that. And absolutely. You got this poor 16 year old girl and she's sleeping with guys and looking for affection. She's not doing it because it's fun.
or it feels good. She's doing it for closeness and affection and love. I get it. These are real problems.
What was so silly to me was their answer. You got to feel good about you. You got to do this for you. You got to live for you. Well, that's not a Biblical answer to anything. It's not about live for you.
The Wrong Answer to Real Problems
A few years ago, I got a call from a senior's Sunday school class and they said, "We would like you and Susan to come and speak to us." I said, "Well, Susan's never spoken in public." They said, "That's all right. We just want to hear from her. She doesn't have to do the whole lesson. We want to hear from her."
So I said to Susan, "Listen, this senior's Sunday school class has invited us to come and speak and they want you to speak." She said, "Well, I've never spoken in public." I said, "Don't worry. I'll be right there for you."
I said, "Let's go to this class first." So we go to the class on this Sunday and we're just walking around. They don't really know who we are. At this point in time, though now we would fit, at that point in time, we did not fit as seniors. We're walking around and coming back.
It's now Saturday and we're going to teach on Sunday. I said, "Okay, here's the deal. I'll get up and start it. I'll get it going. You do your thing and then I'll come in and save it." She said, "All right, slick, you do whatever it is you think you need to do." I said, "Okay."
So I get up and I do my thing and I said, "You know, I'm glad to be here," and so on. I said, "Your staff, your team has asked Susan to speak and she's never spoken before in public like this. So be gentle but she's here and just welcome her." So they're very polite.
Susan's Powerful Message
Susan gets up and I mean, she was so cool. Yesterday, I spoke to the ladies yesterday and before me, Haley was up. That's my daughter, Haley. She's doing a promo for Crisis Pregnancy Center. She got on a platform. Here's the podium. She's over here away from the podium. She's 23. She's got the microphone, not a note. She did 10 minutes without a single "uh." I'm saying, man, it was a great hour. But she reminded me of her mom.
Susan gets up and she said, "You know what, guys, you may have a hard time listening to me so if you guys don't want to listen, I just want to talk to the women. I was in the Sunday school last week and I was just listening and some of you are at that stage of life where kids are growing and all the things that are going on. I heard so many of you say, 'You know, we've done this and now it's time to get a motor home, go around the country. Now it's time to live for ourselves. Now it's time to do the things we've always wanted to do. It's time really for us to be who we want to be. It's time for us to live for ourselves.'"
She pauses, picks up her Bible and said, "Find me one verse in here where it says you've reached a point where you're supposed to live for yourself." Then she sits down.
I said, "That's why we don't let her talk in public right there. What are you doing? That's why I keep telling you, I'm the soft sensitive one of this whole duo we got going." But that's exactly right. It's not about you, it's about Him and your relationship with Him. You find your identity in Him, not in you.
Understanding God's Discipline
So here's what happens. In my life, there's going to be suffering and pain. What the author of Hebrews talks about here is discipline. If you're one of God's kids and you sin, He's going to take you to the woodshed. It's going to be painful. It's going to hurt for a season.
In fact, I don't even like the order. "Therefore, strengthen your feeble and weak arms and knees." I wish you were strong and then you went and worked out. But you go to work out when you're weak to get strong. So you need to understand this process of this battle, that it will stop. When it stops, don't quit. Don't give up.
The Fruit of the Spirit Under Pressure
Take the fruit of the Spirit. We've got five minutes. Take the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. There's the fruit of the Spirit. If you're a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit living in your life and He produces this fruit in you.
Think about this fruit. You can't tell if it's real until you put it in a pressure situation. You don't know if you have love for someone until you come across something, characteristics that's unlovable. Love, joy. You don't know if you have joy. We're not talking about happiness now, we're talking about joy. You don't know if you have joy until the circumstances around you come in and begin to crush you a little bit. Love, joy, peace. You don't know if you have peace until all of a sudden there's turmoil around you.
So there's going to be hurt. There's going to be pain. There's going to be suffering. There's going to be consequence. Some of it's the wear and tear of living. Some of it's discipline that's coming into your life. Some of it's the result of those hard, difficult trials that God's going to put you through. So don't stop.
Trust the Word
And trust. That's the last thing. Trust. Trust the Word.
So, 1 Peter chapter 5. Peter writes this: "And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong and firm and steadfast." Now, that's Peter.
Let me see if I can make this point. I love, you all know this, I love television. I love infomercials. I love them. In our cable, I don't know what your cable's like, but in our cable, if you go up to 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, those are all infomercials 24 hours a day. So every half hour I go there to see what's on. I love infomercials.
My favorite, and He didn't bring something out this year which has me a little concerned, but my favorite guy of them all is Richard Simmons. I love to watch Richard Simmons. I love Richard Simmons. I love to watch the thing.
The Power of Testimony
You know, you've got Easy Shaper, where you've got all this stuff going on, but there's these leather-sized size twos, or ab flex. You've got all these people. I like Richard Simmons because he'll bring out some woman, not always, and she'll be a pretty heavy gal, and she'll say, I've lost 148 pounds, and Richard will say, this is incredible. You're terrific. Hang in there. They're crying and weeping and hanging on him. It just mystifies me. Every infomercial has as its core a testimony. That's the hook.
The other night I'm watching an infomercial for a new set of wedges, 52, 56, 60 degree wedges. They're talking about how it's the first change in the wedges in 50 years. And they're talking about how they'd move. I'm thinking, that's what I need. That's the thing. I need some new wedges. That's because I'm not playing, and I think if I could, that would help me.
So I'm taking this down, I'm dialing to get these wedges. I'm ordering these wedges. I give them my credit card. I'm on the internet, wrestling with whether to do this. I hit send and it rejects it, and I thought, that is God. I don't need, well, that's not true. I need new wedges. I just don't need to pay for them. I need new wedges, but I don't need to be buying new wedges.
Peter's Before and After Picture
Isn't that incredible? What got me there? It was the testimony. It's a testimony of the person that says, listen, that's what it is. Here's a before, here's after. Why do they do this?
The guy talking to you here is Peter. Let me give you the before picture. I don't know Him. I don't know Him. I don't know Him. There's the before picture. Here's the after picture. Now he's been redeemed. He's preached. He's been saved. He's been used by God. And here's what he said: After you've suffered a while, He'll restore you and make you strong and firm and steadfast all over again. Hang in there.
There's somebody that's been through it. There's his testimony. I don't care how you crash and burn. It's not going to be as dramatic as Peter's.
The Devastating Moment of Eye Contact
The Scripture tells us, as we unfold the Gospels, that as he denied the Lord Jesus the third time, his eyes met the Savior's. Imagine that. When I'm guilty, here you go, and we have it all the time.
Couple comes in, want to get married. We'll be talking, just talking along. And then, kind of after we're talking about where you're going on your honeymoon and what do you see as the ceremony, I'll look at the gal and I'll say, are you guys having sex? And the gal, she'll give you a tell right away, she'll go, no. Well, you're lying, and you can't do it with a guy because he'll go, no, he's lying. But the girl can't hide it. The girl can't cover it up.
If you say to her, especially if you say, are you having sex, her eyes won't keep contact. She'll dart. She'll look. She'll give you the tell, just like that. You can't make eye-to-eye contact. She can't even look at me, a total stranger, and say that's what's going on. Here's Peter looking eye-to-eye with Jesus. How devastating does that have to be? And yet, here he is a few years later, and he's writing these powerful words to say, but after you've suffered a while, He'll restore you. You'll be steadfast. You'll be redeemed.
When Weakness Becomes Strength
Here's the close on this. You are weak. The good news is, according to Scripture, when I'm weak, I'm really strong. And ultimately, I've got to be thinking long-term.
Jesus at the end of His life, John 14, He's getting ready to say goodbye to the disciples. He's leaving the next day. He said, I go to a perfect place for you, and you know the way, and Thomas says, we don't have a clue what you're talking about. And Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.
See, a day or two from now, those of us who are believers are going to be standing in the presence of the Lord. And that reality, that future reality, has to affect the way we live today. So when I'm weak, and I acknowledge it, and I express my utter dependence upon Him, all of a sudden, I don't have the strength of my own self-discipline, I have the strength of the Spirit that indwells me.
Next week, we talk about anxiety. I'm already anxious about it. We'll talk about it next week.
Father, thank You for this truth. Let it change the way we think, and therefore, the way we behave, the way we live. We pray to You here this morning, in Jesus' name, Amen. Have a great week. We'll see you next week.