What’s the best way to CLOSE out this month’s series on “Recognizing Our INADEQUACY Without God?” With a message on our need to OPEN up.    God tells us to OPEN UP and examine ourselves regularly to discern which direction our faith walk should take.    “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” Psalm 139:23    Getting our response to that...

I spent the day yesterday hustling down the freeway running through California’s spine with a throng of people trying to escape their Covid Cocoon and chase whatever kind of NORMAL awaits them on the road ahead. Along the way I resisted stopping at the first two IN-N-OUT Hamburger stands I encountered; but succumbed to the third. I pulled into the drive-through–after muttering my self-directed...

We’re playing the PRIDE CARD today as we head into the home stretch on this month’s exploration into RECOGNIZING OUR INADEQUACY without God. Please keep an open mind and strap yourself in for the ride.    Nobody should be surprised to see PRIDE show up in the context of recognizing our INADEQUACY without God. Heck, his Word has a list of traits that he despises.    “There are six...

The CHRISTIAN BUBBLE is a “safe haven” Christians seek to minimize or avoid contact with the “world.”    I get it. Bubble wrap keeps things from breaking or changing shape. Consider the compelling difference between transporting an antique vase across town loose in the back seat or bubble wrapped in a box. I chose the loose approach ONCE, but from that point on I’ve been going with bubble...

How crazy is that thought for a Christian? I mean, c’mon…making decisions about your faith like it was a lunch order? Really? Yep. That was how I was thinking early in my faith walk. Ouch.    I had elected myself as BOSS and put myself in charge of making every decision in my life as if it was nothing more than a lunch order. I was a corporate CEO at the time and EVERYTHING in my life could...

You get cut…blood comes out. You squeeze a tube of toothpaste…toothpaste comes out. You wash a load of clothes…dirt comes out. Here’s the first step in allowing God to determine and animate what comes out when life squeezes us: Recognize our INADEQUACY without God. Otherwise, we will be tempted to play BOSS and try to control–on our own–what comes out of us. And that never turns out...

God gives children a natural curiosity about life and its wonder. He gives them a quizzical and probing nature. He gives them a spontaneous bent and joyful heart. And then, like magic, it seems to vanish in the night as we grow up in a cynical bubble with oxygen infused with doubt and fear. Worry and fret. Problems and pain.    That’s a problem for us adult Christians who are told by God...

It is IMPOSSIBLE to fully recognize our INADEQUACY without God if we do not have Christian HUMILITY running through our veins and invading our soul. That’s why it is important to regularly check in on ourselves by asking: “Are YOU a HUMBLE Christian?”    Here’s a snapshot of what Christian humility IS: Respect for the dignity and worth of all God’s people. Putting God and others ahead...

We’re a couple of weeks into exploring the need to recognize our INADEQUACY without God and I can feel the Holy Spirit working in my life and in the lives of many other members of this ministry’s 1.2 million-strong global online tribe. The comments and questions that are coming in bear that out. Here’s an interesting one: “I am beginning to trust God more than me, but even though I’m trying hard,...

One of the biggest BARRIERS to recognizing our INADEQUACY without God is wrapped up in our DESIRE. But it is not the obvious, on-the-surface signs and symbols of our desire. You know…things like playing boss of our life. Chasing money and success. Pursuing pleasure and power. No, not that kind of desire. I’m talking about the desire beneath our desire.    In other words, what is the desire...