I came to faith from a non-Christian, non-religious family that was very dysfunctional. In some ways that was an advantage to my development in Christ after being born again. Why? Because I didn’t have the lack of reasoning that seems to hinder so many believers today. Reason is the God given tool that we all are born with as human beings, but it can be easily compromised by false or misleading tradition or training. These influences put blinders on people’s ability to reason out what works and what doesn’t.

It is so easy to become insecure in life because of all the turmoil in the world, let alone because of weaknesses in our character or abilities. Fears about the economy, our health and even about our own personal value in other peoples’ eyes can, and often do, hinder us.

I find that many people today hear what they want to hear rather than hearing what another has spoken. There seems to be a disconnect because many people listen to others and then arrive at a totally false conclusion. This can happen often between married couples but it also happens with friends, business people and the general public. We can hear people on the news and misunderstand what they said and then go around telling people our false conclusions. If people don’t learn the art of listening they will keep coming up with those bad conclusions.

Have you noticed how the world today is intolerant of anything godly? Just a few years ago the world was pushing for people to be more tolerant, which in some ways seemed like a good idea, yet the tolerant propaganda was just a Trojan Horse to get our society flexible toward wholesale liberal ideas which are against Judeo Christian foundations. Most of all, they wanted people from religious persuasions that believed in the God of the Bible to stop talking about morals and ethics all together. The trick was to get Christians and moral people to shut up and just be quiet as these social engineers attempted to change our country. The worst part is that many Christians did just what they were told. They got quiet instead of getting louder to expose the lies of the liberal left that want nothing to do with God and ethics. 

I have to confess I hate waiting in line at stores or restaurants, especially at the checkout line to pay the bill. The other day I was at the checkout line at Cracker Barrel and a lady before me was paying for her meal and buying some gift items. The checker was messing up her bill and had to ring her bill up several times with multiple tickets – O brother! I have just started walking with my special boot since my left foot Achilles surgery and I gave the bill to my wife and walked outside to sit down because I can’t stand long in one place.

I wrote a previous article about what drives us in life in our decision making.  In the first article, I discussed that discovering what drives our choices is crucial and certainly worth our effort to better understand the causes and misconceptions about what drives us. My hope is to help us all evaluate what motivates us to make the best decisions and thus discover ways to fulfill God’s calling in our lives.

There is a lot of scripture that believers just pass over as poetic and sounding nice, yet God spoke these words for us to incorporate into our daily lives. One such passage is in John’s gospel were Jesus said he is the bread of life. So many in the body of Christ have taught that this is some metaphysical concept that human reasoning cannot explain or engage with so it becomes poetic theology.

Many professing Christians say they believe that scripture is the word of God and yet somehow they “Cherry-Pick” the scriptures they like and avoid the parts they don’t like. This attitude of rejecting certain scriptures and embracing others ends up twisting our concepts about God and ourselves and can make our Christian faith either powerless or, at the worst, a counterfeit faith.

Warranties are so important for things like cars and houses. Even medical policies we call insurance are a must because most of us couldn’t afford the out of pocket expenses if things go wrong or they break. Imagine people’s surprise when they get a repair bill for their car or a hospital bill and discover the policy they purchased in good faith doesn’t covering their problem. This happens either the policy was misrepresented by the sales person or we failed to read the fine print before purchasing. The same can happen with our expectation of what salvation is all about. We can be told one thing by pastors and teachers in the body of Christ only to discover when we die that we were told the wrong thing and we are not welcomed into God’s embrace.

I listened to a sermon recently on how easy it is to live from instinct rather than identity. As believers, all too often I think we live from our past brokenness rather than from who God says we are, and who we should become in him.