Earlier this afternoon, as I was leaving for a home Bible study at a friend’s in Arlington Heights, my new roommate saw me carrying stuff out to my car and asked if I needed help.

Turns out she was headed to the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles to get a state I.D. card and I was able to give her a lift to Foster and Elston, just a mile from my entrance to I-90 West. It was the first time since I moved in a week ago that we actually had a conversation.

When I told her I had just learned at 10 a.m. that I’d lost over $15,000 in the stock market, giving me only $7,000 left to live on, she said, “Wow, you’re doing real well for just getting that news. I’d be in my bed with the pillow over my head and a ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign on my door. I don’t go out when I’m real upset.”

Of course, my mind has been reeling all day. I thought about what she said and wondered, “Yeah, why is it I’m not completely losing my mind?!” Then I remembered I already went through a spell like that just this past July where I was, in fact, hoping a truck would run me over I was so overcome with depression. I guess I’m now proving I learned something from the experience.

*****

Here’s a great passage from an old sermon by Jordan:

“You’re never going to find anyone in all of your life to unconditionally accept you, and love you, and forgive you, and someone who can give you some real purpose that will last and some meaning that has some meaning.

“That Book says that all is vanity. It says, ‘Man in his best state is altogether vanity.’ You know how you can prove it? Watch whatever it is you think you’re going to get purpose and meaning in life out of and you know will happen? You watch it long enough and it will disappoint you.

“You watch it long enough and it will change on you. We live in an economy today where only an alchemist would be safe. It used to be when economic revolutions—from the Iron Age to industrialization and all these different ages came along—it used to be those changes spanned a whole lifetime of a person. Now, there’ll be two or three of them change in your lifetime.

“. . . It’s always been a joke that when you buy a computer, you’re buying planned obsolescence because what you’re buying is already out of date and new stuff’s coming out the door. A five-year turnaround changes everything.

“Chris here is studying to be doctor. I feel sorry for him; I really do. They took his mother’s gallbladder out this week and just stuck a little thing down inside her and took a picture and she’s going to show me the home videos of it.

“I mean, they went in and sucked it out with a straw! A couple of years before my dad died, when they took his gall bladder out they cut him from stem to stern. It took him two weeks lying on his back in the hospital before he could get up. With Chris’ mom, they took it out Monday and she was home Tuesday.

“That means that the doctor that learned how to take it out the old way is out of date. The point is, if you’re going to get your identity out of your job, in about five years you’re not going to have an identity.

‘If you’re going to get your purpose and meaning out of life in that--‘Change and decay all about I see.’ The only place you’re ever going to get meaning and purpose out of life is in Christ. The only place you’re ever going to get something that lasts is in Him.

“You know what people do, though? We try to have our spiritual needs met by our mates. Well, with that, I’ll have my soul needs met and think that that’s all there is to be met. But your spiritual needs are needs that can only be met in Jesus Christ.

“Your Bible doesn’t say you’re a body, soul and a spirit. You are a spirit, a soul and a body. Your spiritual needs have to come first, and they have to be met. You need unconditional acceptance, love and forgiveness, and you need a meaning and a purpose in your life. Once you have those needs met in Christ, you’re free from having those needs haunt you.

“When your heart’s and your spirit’s craving for love is unconditionally given to you, not on the basis of your performance, but that you’re loved in spite of your failures . . . Not if you live up to the standard, because you’re always failing to live up to it no matter how low you put it.

“The verse says, ‘In whom we have redemption through his blood.’ He says He’s made us accepted in the Beloved One. He’s set His love upon us and He’s demonstrated it at Calvary. There it is, objectively, historically demonstrated how much He values and esteems us. And He just unconditionally accepts you on the basis of what His Son did; not on the basis of what you did.”

“He puts you in Christ, and the merits of everything Jesus Christ has won, you’re complete in Him and blessed with all spiritual blessings. There’s a lot in the Bible about how we relate to God and to one another as members of the Body of Christ, and it’s all based upon the spiritual identity we have in Christ, and all the needs for love and acceptance and purpose and meaning in life. Listen, you need a reason to get up in the morning . . .

“You might as well just forget it and acknowledge that. Instead of beating your head against the brick wall, just understand . . . An accountant told me one time something that helped me tremendously. Years ago, we were talking about IRS regulations and rules and how some of them just didn’t make sense.

“Have you ever noticed how most of the IRS regulations make no sense? And I was trying to figure this thing out, trying to make sense of it, and I worked on it and worked on it and nothing made any sense.

“He said, ‘Look, Rick, the first thing you have to do is recognize that the IRS regulations are not supposed to make sense. If you’ll quit trying to deal with it logically—A leads to B, leads to C, leads to D—the way you deal with the IRS is you just find out what the rules are and then do that. Quit trying to make any sense out of it; just find out how it works and work it.’

“Since then the IRS doesn’t bother me. I know it’s not supposed to make any sense. I just find out what they want done and do it. You’ll drive yourself stark-raving buggy trying to understand why it is. They don’t understand why it is.

“I mean, it’s such a convoluted system of nonsense they don’t know what it’s all about. So what do you do? You just say, ‘I don’t have to understand it; I just have to figure out what to do and do it.’ Well, that’s sort of the way I take that verse right there.”

*****

Jordan continues, “Paul writes, ‘For the love of Christ constraineth us.’ The first issue is, ‘This is how God loves me.’ Isn’t it wonderful to know in verse 5 that God isn’t easily provoked with you—that God thinks no evil?

“That’s a great one, you know that? God never thinks of you and thinks bad about you. How many of your wrongs this morning are in God’s little file book? None. You know where they are? They’re under the blood! You mean He’s forgot them? Well, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with God’s memory, okay. God chooses not to bring them up anymore. Because of the blood of Christ, God has made a conscious commitment and decision and choice not to bring them up.

“God’s saying, ‘I choose not to go over it anymore with you.’ Do you deal with your spouse the way God deals with you? Well, why don’t you focus a little bit on the way God deals with you?! I mean, He chooses not to bring up your problems and He chooses not to do it forever! You talk about good memories, not bad memories!”

*****

Back in eternity past, before the world began, there was simply God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, and the three of them sat down for a board meeting.

“They made a promise to one another—that’s all there was back there,” says Jordan. “They liked each other, by the way. They talked with one another; they fellowshipped with one another and they enjoyed enhancing one another.”

This promise God literally made to Himself is found in Ephesians 1: “Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;
[9] Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself:
[10] That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:
[11] In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
[12] That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.
[13] In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.”

*****

From Proverbs 8, we know God had a specific design when He created all things. “In fact, there was a blueprint sitting on the table (in eternity past),” says Jordan. “This blueprint He had as He made the universe. When you read Genesis 1 and you see that, you see creation was created through an evolutionary process, wasn’t it? A six-day evolutionary process, not billions of years.

“In a sense, you believe in theistic evolution—that God created the universe in six days. He did certain things one day, certain things another day. What I’m trying to get you to think about is He had an order to it.

“It didn’t all just come out, ‘Kaboom!’ It was a six-day process. It’s Bible evolution and that’s what gets science worshipping churchmen really mad at you. Because when you think that you’re going to go and prove the Bible by science, and prove God by science, and defend God by those kinds of things; now you’re trusting the wrong thing for your faith to rest in.

“There’s a reason when people look at creation it looks like it evolved. Because God created it with a process. First thing, second thing, etc. Now, if it happened the way we would do it, we’d look at it and say, ‘It had to take billions of years.’ God said, ‘It didn’t take me billions of years. It took me six days.’

“So, why did you do it in six days instead of one, God? ‘Because I had a design; I was trying to educate you, I was trying to teach you. I had some things I wanted you to learn.’

“It’s not ‘Kaboom!’ it’s boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. In other words, there’s order to it. God is a God of order. Everything in creation—your life is designed to be lived in an orderly fashion. In your home, your finances, your thinking process, in all of your life—your marriage, your relationships with others.”