Living to Win Over Stress

Tom Shrader takes a different approach to stress management by focusing on what believers need to know rather than what they need to do. He presents five foundational truths: God is in control, God forgives sin, God is our only hope, God causes all things to work together for good, and God does not change. Rather than offering typical stress relief advice like exercise and sleep, Tom emphasizes that understanding these truths about God's character provides the proper perspective for handling life's pressures.

“Part of the stress and the thought process is I begin to do the what if, and if this happens, and how about this, and what should I do, and can I make a mistake, and will I make a mistake, and if I make a mistake, what happens?”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Living to Win (2005)

Recorded: May 19, 2005

Duration: 43 min

Themes: stress, anxiety, worry, peace, trust, control, hope, perspective, overwhelmed parent, stressed worker, anxious believer, feeling pressured, new believer, struggling with control, worried about future, dealing with uncertainty

Scripture: James 1:2-4, James 1:5, 1 Corinthians 10:13, Romans 6:12, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 1 Corinthians 6:20, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 2 Corinthians 11, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, Romans 8:28, James 1:17, Malachi 3:6, Psalm 139

Theological Themes: sovereignty, god's control, providence, divine forgiveness, immutability, unchanging god, sanctification, spiritual warfare

Full Transcript

Today is session 7, and if you've been here with us, you understand. Here's the series: Living to Win. Living to Win over the entanglements of life, the things that can tie you up. In that process, we have dealt with some topics: worthlessness, loneliness, anxiety, guilt. Today is one that at the beginning, if I said to you, what should be on the list, I think today would hit the list. Today is a topic you would expect, and today's topic is Living to Win over Stress.

Now I have a personal experience in this. In all the years we've done the curriculum and used this material, developing it and changing it, this is the one lesson that we've ever developed that I didn't like. I don't like it. I didn't like the way it was done. So I canned it all and started from scratch. I hope this works for you. The flow may be more where it just stimulates thoughts on your part, rather than generates any sort of answers here. So hopefully you'll get in the flow of this very quickly.

Understanding Stress: From Physics to Psychology

Let me do a little bit of introduction, a little bit of setup. In ancient times, the word stress was used as a term in physics. The definition is: mutual force or action between contiguous surfaces of bodies caused by external forces as tensions or shear. The intensity of the force was expressed in the term pounds per square inch. So that's how they used to use that. If you talk to most people now and you say stress, that's not what they're thinking of.

Later, after the physics term had run its course in popular culture, the medical profession or the psychological profession began to develop this whole idea of stress, probably more as we know it. One biologist defines stress this way, and this is a pretty good definition: Stress is essentially the wear and tear of living. What I like about that is it begins to push this into the scope that I'm operating under, the scope of thought. That is, all of us are dealing with some level with this idea of stress.

The Scope of the Problem

The American Medical Association recently reported that 50% of all visits to doctors involve stress. They say this is a health problem that makes stress more common than the common cold. The director of Britain's National Association of Mental Health wrote this: "The whole Western world is under stress. Our mode of living produces continuous stress from the moment we're born. It hits everyone. There's no escaping it. Stress affects the apparently happy, healthy person just as much as the natural-born worrier." He continues, "I'm left in no doubt that stress is the fastest-growing disease in the Western world."

It has a toll. Michael DeBakey, the great heart pioneer, writes this: "High blood pressure, cholesterol, lack of exercise, obesity, cigarette smoking all contribute to heart disease. But more and more, it's beginning to appear that the single greatest cause of heart attack is the stress of life." I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal not too long ago talking about the stress of life on 18-month-olds who are being placed in daycare. So you have the stress of life. For us, it just is every day, every part of our life.

Physical Manifestations of Stress Overload

It also has a physical manifestation. Let me give you some of these indicators that the experts offer that would say that we are in a sense of a stress overload.

Here's the first one: Decision-making becomes difficult. I worked with a guy one day who had a Navy Blazer, needed new gray slacks. Seems like an easy chore, get gray slacks anywhere. He said, "I'm just going to run over to Robinson's or Dillard's and just get a pair of gray slacks." He came back. I said, "How'd the slacks go?" He said, "I couldn't buy them." I said, "Why?" He said, "There were so many shades of gray, I was paralyzed when I got there." And this guy, literally, he was at a point in his life where he could not make a decision.

Here's the second one: Daydreaming about getting away from it all. Constant thought about how I can get out of here, how I can remove myself from the circumstances, the life I'm in. Increased use of alcohol or smoking or something that substitutes to try to provide this temporary relief.

Thoughts trail off while speaking or writing. I didn't plan this, and yesterday, about five minutes after this, I lost my thought so far into this thing, it made me laugh. But excessive worrying about everything. Sudden outbursts of temper or hostility. Or the other side of that, frequent brooding or sense of quietness, inadequacy, melancholy, whining even.

Mistrust of friends and family and coworkers. Forgetfulness about appointments and deadlines and dates. And then just a reversal of usual behavior. So it really is. I do think this is something every one of us are dealing with. And it has a manifestation in our life. And that's what we're talking about.

A Different Approach: What You Need to Know

At this point, most of the time, what people do is to say, here's what we need to do. You need to get some exercise. You need to sleep and get adequate sleep. I just was yesterday or the day before with somebody, and they were all into this new thing about sleep and how we just are not getting enough sleep. Last Thursday, I think, or the week before, Susan and I—this is an all-time low—were ready for bed. We had eaten dinner, and we're ready for bed at 4:21. This is a low. This is not a good sign. We ate dinner at 3:50. We had everything done. We were on the couch and saying, "Well, what do we do now?" So that's not a good sign. So I'm getting my sleep.

And then exercise. When you talk about stress, if you go to the bookstores, if you begin to look at this topic, most of what you'll see is here are the things you need to do. I want to take a little bit different approach here. I want to give you things you need to know as you begin to deal with stress. Now, I'm going to do something that is

Five Things You Need to Know

Here's what God says. He says about this word, the Bible, don't add to it or don't take away from it. I want to go just the opposite way. I'm going to say to you, feel free to add to or take away anything you want from this list. This may be just a list that gets you started, and this may be helpful in this thought process.

It really does ride on the wave of what we talked about in the past, that as I'm dealing with areas of life, what I know trumps what I feel. I have to stay in that realm of what I know. Nothing wrong with feelings, but those feelings can be deceiving. When I'm confused, when I'm in those states where I'm unsure, what I have to make certain that I do is to go back on the things that I'm certain of, the things that I know.

So I'm going to give you five things. Like I said, you can add to this list. You can take away from this list. Five things that you need to know as you go through all of life, particularly in times of stress.

Number One: God Is in Control

Number one, I'll bet you could all guess this. Number one, God is in control. That's the very first thing that I need to get my arms around, that God is in control.

Part of the stress and the thought process is I begin to do the what if, and if this happens, and how about this, and what should I do, and can I make a mistake, and will I make a mistake, and if I make a mistake, what happens? I am in an interesting profession in life in that I do a lot of counseling in all of these areas that I have absolutely no qualifications for at all. People seem to, and as I get older, it seems to happen even more. I become the parish priest, the confessor, where people want to just pull me aside and talk about their sin as though I have absolution or something, which I don't, or come to points in life and talk about, here's where I am, and can you help me with this?

I don't mind that at all. I love that. But I'll be lots of times, especially with career decisions, and I'll find guys who are 30, 32, 33 years of age, who are getting ready to make a career decision. They're petrified. They're saying, here you go. I'm at a point in my life, this is the last career decision I'm going to make, and I don't want to screw this up.

I said, wait, wait, wait, stop. First of all, you've probably got, especially now, two or three or four more career changes. And secondly, let's say you screw it up. They're not going to take you out back and beat you. You just go to the next deal.

When Fear Paralyzes Performance

If you're sitting there worried about making mistakes, you are not going to perform to your optimum level. That's just really simple. You can smell, when they come in the door, you can smell a salesperson who needs the deal. And if that's the way you're operating, everybody's going to know it.

Well, I'm afraid. They all tie together. I need to go back to something that I know, and what I know is that God is in control. So it may not look that way to me.

Tests and Trials We Don't Like

We don't like, here's what we don't like. I never liked school very much. Mark Twain said he never let school interfere with his education. And that's kind of the way that I operate. I thought school was a joke. And if you're an educator, I really apologize for that, because I'm sure you were the exception. But it just was not my deal.

So I tried to pass those characteristics on to my daughters, who were great students, and loved school, and took it very seriously. So we had conflict over this. I did not like at all, I didn't mind classroom, and I loved discussion. I didn't like tests, because you had to know something and study. They weren't my deal.

Well, I've carried that over into the balance of my life, and I've discovered that most people don't like tests. Most people don't like testing. And for us in our life, most of our testing comes in the form of trials.

The Testing of Faith Produces Endurance

So it's important to understand that when James writes, "considered all joy when you encounter various trials," that He's talking to you and me, and it has great application in this area of stress. "Counted all joy" seems unnatural. Yee-haw, we have a trial. "Counted all joy when," there's the inevitability, "when you encounter various trials."

Why? Here's that key word, knowing. I know something, because what I know trumps what I feel. "Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." So if you're saying this, here's what I want. If you're saying, here's what I want in my life, I want endurance. I want to be in here for the long haul.

Finishing Strong

I went out to Scottsdale Bible Church a couple of weeks ago on Saturday morning. Bob Craning was speaking to the men. I've known Craning for quite a while, and I thought if I went out, there'd be a chance that I could at least say hello to Him and listen to Him. Part of Bob's thing, and it's been, I think Bob's 70 or 71 now, part of Bob's thing is, I want to finish strong.

There's a sense where everybody goes, you're 71, you've made it. And Bob's point has been that over the last five, six, seven years, He's watched tons of His peers, His age, who are just not fit. They're failing. It may be a moral failure, a financial failure, or they're just not breaking the tape. They're not finishing strong.

He made an observation that's absolutely accurate and profound. He said, here are these guys who have 30 or 40 years of ministry. They have a screw-up at the end of their life. And when you're over at Starbucks, and their name comes up, you look at each other and say, hey, did you hear about what happened? And there's 40 years of faithfulness that you don't see. And that's this test.

I want to finish strong. What James says, if you want to finish strong, then you better work your way through these trials. He said, you've got to know something. Know, and then He just goes on. He says, "know the testing of your faith produces endurance." And then He says this, "if any of you lacks..."

wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously without reproach, and it'll be given to you." A lot of people will say at the beginning of a building committee meeting, "somebody pray." And they'll say, "Oh, Father, you say if we lack wisdom, just ask, and you'll give it to us. And we want your wisdom here tonight in this meeting." Fine, whatever.

I think the context of this says, especially in the midst of trials, especially in the midst of difficulties, because in the midst of trials and difficulties, I can very easily lose my perspective. I can very easily start with all of these questions and concerns, and all of a sudden, my mind begins to drift. And He even talks to that about doubting. If you lack wisdom, you ask, and He gives it to you. Marvelous.

First Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13 says, "Listen, God's not going to test you or tempt you beyond that which you can endure." Now, it may feel like it, but I've got to come back, and I've got to understand God's got everything under control.

God's Control Over Creation

Years ago, there was a gentleman that I met. I went to a thing, and he was speaking. And this guy was fascinating to me. He worked for McDonnell Douglas in the early 60s. And his job was to be a liaison between McDonnell Douglas and NASA and liaison between McDonnell Douglas and the seven original astronauts.

So he worked with the seven original astronauts, McDonnell Douglas, and their whole thing was, "We're going to put a guy in space. We're going to orbit the Earth. We're going to send him to the moon." And so he's in the middle of all this. His name is Bob Hage. Some of you may know Bob. Every once in a while, maybe once a year, he'll be in town from Colorado, and he'll stop in to study. And he just wrote a book on aviation from 1902 to 2002 or something. It's a hundred years of aviation. Great book, great guy.

So he's talking, and he's talking about there's this thing that's central to our whole ability to get a guy into space and back, but we can't explain it. It's called gravity. He's on the phone at home, and he's talking to some scientists, and they're doing gravity, and all this. He's all done. And his maid said to him, "I can explain that to you." He said, "Really?" She said, "Yeah. The Bible says that God holds all things together."

Bob Hage had been all around the world in this spiritual journey. He'd spent time with Francis Schaeffer and L'Abri and all this other stuff. And that day, his maid was used by God to lead him to Christ. It's just a magnificent truth.

The Marvel of God's Design

Well, if you get into this whole area of space and astronomy, you start to go, "Wait a minute, there must be a God." Let me take you down the road a little bit. The Earth weighs—I have no idea how they know this stuff—6,588,000,000,000 tons. And it spins on its axis at 1,000 miles an hour and in orbit at 1,000 miles a minute. And part of this Milky Way, that if you could travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second, take you 125,000 years to cross this, which is one of billions.

When we are at Sea Ranch, we're there in August and oftentimes get the meteor showers and all this stuff. If you take your binoculars and you just find a bright spot, it's like there's a dark sky, there's a bright spot. I'm talking about just pretty good binoculars. And you throw them on that bright spot, you'll see galaxies and stars and all this stuff. Where does this come from? Honestly, begin to think this through. And I don't know how to get my arms around it.

So they'll study it more and more and more. And then they'll do big bang theories and all these other theories. And when we're all back at the—if they could get all the way back to the end of this, there'd be a guy going, "Hey, how are you doing? I've been waiting for you to figure this out a long time ago."

The Logic of Creation

You cannot get something from nothing. One of the authors writes this. And hang with me because it's kind of a complicated sentence and I'm a poor reader: "It is absurd for the evolutionist to complain that it's unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it's more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into anything."

So here's what he's saying. There has to be something at the beginning. Now, we're not into Bible at this point and we're not into definition. We're just saying there has to be something there at the beginning. That something was God. He creates. You and I don't create.

Someone, here you go, here's a chair. Someone assembled this chair. They didn't create it. They took the steel and they melted it and molded it and they took the fabric and the cushion and all the other things and they assembled or made that chair. God didn't assemble. God created. He spoke it into existence.

God's Communication to Us

And then that God communicated to us in two ways. Through that book you have in front of you and then through His Son, Jesus Christ. And that's what the book says. The book says look around at the creation. And when you look around at the creation, you begin to see God's invisible power. His attributes. His divinity. His majesty.

And the God who created this has communicated to us that He's still in control of it. That history is—and I don't mean to try to be clever, but history is literally His story. His manifestation of Himself and His work through human existence.

And it isn't just in this broad sense that He deals with us, but He deals with us individually. God knows me. He has the very hairs on my head numbered.

God's Personal Knowledge

The psalmist writes this in Psalm 139. And I read one of the contemporary paraphrases: "God investigate me. Get all the facts first hand. I'm an open book. Even from a distance, you know what I'm thinking. You know when I leave, when I get back. I'm never out of your sight. You know everything I'm going to say before I start the first sentence. Where can I go to be away"

From you? If I go to the heights, you're there. The depths, you're there. This is this God. And this God is in control.

We may look at a world that's out of control. I was listening to a radio show the other night. Woke up in the middle of the night, so I hit the radio button for a while. It's one of these weird conversations about being able to teleport people, kind of like in Star Trek. This guy's saying, we've got the science now to begin to transport an atom, we think. He says we think that within probably 25 to 50 years, we'll be able to transport people, though I don't want to be the first one.

But he said when we transport them, what we transport will essentially be a copy of them. It will not be them. You at this point cease to exist. We'll be able to transport them to any place in the world, and you will not even need a receiver on the other end. So your homeland security is screwed at this point. You could transport any object. If you wanted to transport some sort of nuclear weapon through security, you could just simply transport it and be there.

This is all science fiction and all this other stuff. Then the callers are picking up on all this stuff. Now you have this avalanche of people who are saying, the world's going to hell. If you want to hear that theme, come to a Christian community. The world's going to hell. TV's a mess. Everything's wrong. You get the sense that the people who say God is great and God is majestic have forgotten that He's in control.

Remembering God's Control

It may feel like life in general is out of control. It may feel like your life is out of control. It may be beyond your control, but it's not out of God's control. I need to rest in that. If I'm a Christian, I have a personal relationship with this God. This God tells me that He loves me.

There's a second thing in this midst of stress to remember: God forgives sin. You've got two extremes. One, people who sin and don't care. Others who sin and seem to be paralyzed by the guilt. God in His Word just communicates. He said, listen, if anyone confesses His sin, He's faithful to forgive it. If he agrees with it, if he acknowledges that. That's basically what happens at a point of salvation. I come to Christ, I acknowledge my sin, I repent, I'm cleansed, and then He gives me some advice.

Living as Forgiven People

Here's what Paul writes in Romans 6:12: "Therefore, don't let sin reign in your body." In 1 Corinthians 6:9, Paul's talking and he said, listen, you understand this. Don't be deceived. The fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, covetous, drunkards, swindlers—they're not going to inherit the kingdom of heaven.

Listen to this. 1 Corinthians 6:11: "Such were, past tense, some of you, and you were, past tense, washed, and you were, past tense, sanctified, and you were, past tense, justified." That's what we used to be. So we flee immorality. You were bought at a price. Your sin is forgiven.

When the Passion movie came out, I don't like—I guess I'm not a guy. I always thought I was kind of a guy's guy in a way, but I guess not. I don't like the violent movies. I didn't see Gladiator. I just not into a lot of that stuff. So when the Passion of Christ came along, I thought, uh-oh, I got issues here because I don't know about this movie, yet everyone's going to see it.

We didn't know exactly how to handle it. So what I did was rent a theater one night and just take our staff and spouses to see it. I was very, very uncomfortable going in. I'm assuming many of you saw that movie and saw the depiction, and it was very violent. But I found that the violence had context, and I found myself, intriguingly to me, not put off by the violence, but emotionally moved by the violence. Because in some sort of small way, I got a little bit of sense of what Jesus might have gone through physically, and this is absent the real agony of the cross, which was He who knew no sin became sin.

The Price of Forgiveness

So when I read that verse, 1 Corinthians 6, verse 20, "you were bought at a price," I begin to understand that. You and I have been forgiven. Now live that way. I run into people all the time who are running around with all sorts of guilt and they're stressing their life, people who anguish over their sin, and I understand that. But you've been forgiven.

I had a friend years ago whose daughter came home—she was a junior in high school—and she said, "Dad, I'm pregnant." This was one of those high-profile Christian families, and this was the high-profile Christian daughter. So he called in the boy and the girl, and sat them down, and they said, "This is the only time we did this." I tend to not believe that, but that's more a reflection of what I am, perhaps, than they are. They said, "But what we want to do is we want to get married."

He's saying, "You're a junior in high school, you're a senior in high school, there's no way this isn't going to work." Let me fast forward—by the way, I think that was something like 27 or 28 years ago. They've been married now. He has grandkids that are all over. It's a pretty great story.

She continues to go to this school, and one day she comes home and she said, "Dad, the girls are asking me if I'm going to wear a white wedding dress." You and I know what the girls are getting at, but she's a little naive, and she said, "I don't understand what they're asking here." So he kind of takes her through it, and she said, "Daddy, what should I do?"

He said, "Sweetie, what you did is wrong. You acknowledge that, don't you?" She said, "Dad, I know what I did isn't wrong, it's sin, and I've confessed it." He said, "If you've confessed it, you've been forgiven. What's the color of cleansing?" She said, "White." He said, in fact, with tears down His cheeks...

he told me this story years later. He said, "Sweetie, if you wear any other color wedding dress but a white wedding dress, you're gonna break your daddy's heart." And that's to understand that I'm forgiven.

Let me give you something. Someone gave me this—in fact, it was Les Taylor. He came up yesterday, and many of you know Les. He said, "I've got this little sticky thing that I keep in my day timer, and I'm gonna send it to you. This is a great little prayer." He said, "This is a prayer I pray constantly." I got it in front of me: "Father, I find myself remembering what You have forgotten, and condemning myself for what You've forgiven. Teach me never to forget Your forgiveness, because I will only be at peace with myself when I'm at peace with You."

Great picture. God forgives sin.

God Is Our Only Hope

Here's the third thing: God is our only hope. Now, if we had time—time's getting away from us—if we had time, we would turn to 2 Corinthians 4, verses 16, 17, and 18, where Paul writes, "Don't lose heart, though the outer man is decaying, the inner man's being renewed day by day." And then he has a fascinating phrase that he uses in verse 17: "momentary light affliction." That's how he describes his life.

Now, a little bit later, in 2 Corinthians 11, he talks about five times I've received 39 lashes, I was beaten, shipwrecked, stoned—all that went on. He said, "What is that?" When I look at my life, that's what Paul says is momentary light affliction. This is not from the pen of a guy who had a circumstantially easy life. He says, "I learned to live with a lot, I learned to live with a little." The implication there is there were times of prosperity where he had at least enough, maybe even a little extra, and there were times of need. I've had all of this stuff in my life.

I remember when Bo Jackson was on the scene: "Bo knows baseball, Bo knows football"—remember the ad? Well, Paul knows suffering. And he says, "Here's what it is: momentary light affliction." That's the wear and tear of living. And he puts them on a scale, on these balancing scales. He said, "If you take momentary light affliction and put it on this side of the scale, momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."

The Eternal Perspective

If I put them on the scale, it just simply goes like this: to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That's our future. We're going through this, whatever this life is, and all that's coming into it. And I don't for one second begin to say to you what you're experiencing in your life isn't difficult. I know that it is.

What you need at that moment is not to be absorbed in your difficulty. You need perspective. You need a big view. And the big view is, Paul says, "We don't look at the things that are seen—they're temporal—but the things that are unseen, and they're eternal." We're not hung up on this world. Though we live in it, there are moments when it seems like it overwhelms us, maybe floods us. But when I stop, and I get a breath, and I begin to put this thing together and think about it, there's something bigger.

Paul also writes about it in 1 Thessalonians 4. He writes about this thing that we identify as the rapture: "So the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up into the air, and we'll go with Him in the clouds, and we'll be with Him forever." And there's all sorts of discussions about that, and we try to figure timing, and you go figure it out. Whatever—it's gonna happen.

Verse 18 is the key verse, because we always stop at verse 17. Here's verse 18: "Therefore, comfort one another with these words." He said, "Listen, I understand the difficulty of life. But it's momentary light affliction." In the midst of this, our only hope is God—the biblical God—and a relationship with Him through His Son, Jesus Christ.

The Eternal Stakes

Imagine going through this life, and at the end of it, discovering this is the best off you're ever gonna be because you're gonna leave here to spend eternity in hell. That was last night—again, middle of the night, woke up, turned on the radio. And there's a book out, and it's about Andrew Carnegie and a guy by the name—I think the last name was Frick—who was... Carnegie was the steel guy, and then there was this component you needed for steel, and Frick had this.

So at the time, Carnegie ends up with an estimated wealth of $480 million. In today's dollars, they say ballpark about $120 billion. Frick had about a quarter of that. Well, they had an argument. And at the end of his life—and they didn't speak for 17 years—Carnegie sends a note to this guy and says, "Let's get together. We need to meet." And his response to the messenger was, "Tell Andrew Carnegie I'll meet him in hell."

Now that sounds like a cute little flippant comment, but what an awesome thought that is. It's the old Billy Joel—you're just singing along with the song, and then all of a sudden you're singing a verse that says, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, because sinners are lots more fun." You know, maybe at happy hour, maybe at two for one, but they aren't in eternity.

And so in this life, I can have fun, joy, all that goes with it. I'll have difficult times, but ultimately the perspective I need is that all this is temporary. He's eternal. And my only hope is in Him.

God Causes All Things to Work Together for Good

Here's the fourth thing: Romans 8, verse 28. God causes all things to work together for good. I need to remember that. If I go to my Bible—now not this one, I'm using so many different Bibles lately—but if I go to one of the Bibles, not this one I don't believe, right next to chapter 8, verse 28, I have written the word "fact." This is not speculation. This is not wishful thinking. It says, "And we know." There's that word again. And we know. And we know God causes all things...

If I only have a one-verse Bible, and that's the only verse I have, we've talked about this before, and that verse is true, then I immediately know that God must be all-knowing and must be all-powerful. Because if God is working all things together for good, then He must have the ability to work things together, and He must know what's going to happen in order to be able to do that.

God works all things together for good. The problem that we have is, we want to stop there. We need the next phrase. God works all things together for good for those who love Him. And who are those who love Him? Those who are called according to His purpose.

The Promise Is Conditional

So you've got all sorts of people. You're at the office today, and you're hanging with somebody, and they're not a believer, and you're saying, "Don't worry, it'll be all right. Don't worry, everything's going to be okay." I don't know that. Not according to that verse.

That verse says, listen, if you don't love Him, and you aren't called according to His purpose, it isn't all going to work together for good for you. You've got major issues. You've got issues in this life, and this is the best it's going to be. You've got real issues in the next life.

But for those of us who are Christians, we have this confidence. That becomes the word. This confidence. We know that whatever's happening in our lives, in and of itself it may not be good, but even sin, somehow, God uses for our good.

So what's causing that stress? I don't know. Here are these things that may be careening out of control, or these things that I feel in my life, but I know ultimately God works them together for good. And again, I don't mean this in some flip way. I'm just saying, in the ultimate sense, no bad thing can happen to you and me.

God Does Not Change

And here's the last thing. And this may not, on your list, this may not have made the list, but it seems to me to be pretty important. God does not change. If God changed, then maybe He'd say, "Ah, you know, I wrote that a couple thousand years ago, but I've been thinking about it, and I want to rework this thing. It's not going to all work together for you anymore." God doesn't change.

James 1, verse 17: "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." Malachi 3:6: "For I, the Lord, do not change."

The things that He loves, the things He esteems, He still loves and esteems, and the things that He hates, He hates. When He says to you and me, "Abstain from sexual immorality," He means that. When He says, "Flee from it," He means it.

And this is obviously now going to be a very hot topic between now and November 2006. When He says marriage is between a man and a woman, He means marriage is between a man and a woman. Not two women, not two men. Not a man and a dog, not a woman and a monkey. Just the way it is, it's between a man and a woman. That's how it's designed to be. He designed it, He set it up, and we have to lovingly be able to deal with that issue. God doesn't change.

The Pattern We Must See

As I said, you can add to or take away from this list. Let me read you this list one more time. Five things I need to know: God's in control. God forgives sin. God's our only hope. God causes all things to work together for good. God doesn't change.

Do you see a pattern here? God, God, God, God, God. I have a tendency, maybe you do, I have a tendency in the midst of a difficulty to think about Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom. What about me, what about me, what about me, what about me, what about me? That's how I think. That's my flinch.

I told this story, I think it was Sunday in church, but we're getting ready for one of the girls' weddings, and we're in bed two, three weeks ahead of time, and I said to Susan, "How you doing for the wedding?" And you all know weddings and their hassle and all that goes with it, and she said she's got three ring binders and all organized. Her goal was to be done two weeks ahead of time and then just enjoy the wedding like everyone else. And so we're like two and a half, three weeks out.

And I said, "How you doing?" And she said, "Great." And I said, "Are you on track?" And she said, "I'm on track. I got two or three more things to do in the next couple days, and then I'll just be able to enjoy it." I said, "Terrific." She said, "How are you doing?" I said, "I'm not doing so well. I'm really struggling with this little girl and everything." And she said, "Really?" She said, "Can I say something?" I said, "Sure." She said, "I'm so sick of your struggling. I am so sick of your struggle. You're so self-absorbed. This isn't about you. This is about her and a new chapter of life. You fulfill the responsibility you have. I am so sick about hearing about, oh, my little girl, I am sick of this stuff." And I said, "Well, you're lucky because I'm not in the mood tonight."

And the next day, I was driving up to La Posada. And I'm on the freeway, and I'm thinking, maybe, perhaps, she had a small point that I should consider. But see, that's my flinch. That's your flinch.

The Need for a Different Focus

So, now tough times come, and what do I think about? What's it going to mean to me? What about me? And what God is saying is, listen, what you really need to do is to immerse yourself in me, to serve the people that are around you, and know that I'm in control, and that when you sin, I'll forgive you. And all this is temporary, and I'm going to take everything and work it together for good, and I'm the God that doesn't change.

Now, let me just take two minutes here. That all sounds really great, sitting in this room, but in about 30 seconds, you're going out this door, and that's not the world you live in. And you can know all these things.

Here's what I want you to see. I see a lot of what, to me, is misplaced application of this. This does not mean that in your life, when something happens, you

You are not going to have an emotional reaction to it. I'll meet people all the time who say, "Well, I had this and I turned it over to God, then I took it back, then I turned it over, then I took it back." I'll have to say, "What do you mean you turned it over?"

I think people have this weird idea that here comes this thing in your life, and you'll go, "Oh God, this is Yours," and like you're going to have amnesia and never think about it again. It just isn't going to work that way. If you're walking around, and I don't mean to be graphic here, but if you're Susan at this point and you're walking around with tattoos on you and markings on you, and you've got all this stuff that's happening, and there's constant reminders of what you're going through, it's silly to think you aren't going to think about that again.

You're going to think about it every day. There's nothing wrong with thinking. There would be something wrong with you if you didn't think about it.

When Thoughts Come, Remember Who's in Control

But when that thought comes in and I begin to contemplate it, what overshadows it is, "Oh yeah, God, You're in control." Which doesn't mean I'm a robot. It just means You're God. And there's my hope.

And so You've given me a bunch of stuff in my life that I wouldn't choose and I wouldn't like, but God, here's what I want You to do. Teach me a lesson and use me. And that can be anywhere from the deal that falls apart today to the moron that's sitting in front of you with a right turn arrow and won't turn, this idiot that God's put right there in front of you every day, this dope that's there which seems like a small thing until he's in front of me. Drives me nuts.

It could be these little things or these giant things. The application is all the same, isn't it? He's in control.

Truth Remains Constant in Real Life

While this makes total sense in the classroom, when you get out in the laboratory, it doesn't just go, "Oh, yeah, boom, boom, boom," because it's not a sterile environment out there. It's real life. But even in real life, this is the truth. And the truth doesn't change.

That's why He says, "Here you go, count it all joy when you encounter various trials because you know something." Count it all joy because you know something. You know God. You know who He is. And that changes life.

Father, help us see this truth, apply it to our life. We pray that to You in Jesus' name, amen. Have a great week. We'll see you next week.