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Matthew: Always leave the church door open. I'll explain. On Key Life, God's grace changes everything. How we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase, and worship. This is Key Life with practical Bible teaching to get you home with radical freedom, infectious joy and surprising faithfulness.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. You've been listening. We've spent a good deal of time last week and this week talking about kickers. The lies that we believe when somebody adds something to the gospel.

I am forever thankful that Martin Luther didn't do that. Salvation by faith in Christ and then alone. Zippo. Nothing else. Period. That's the gospel without kickers.

And we've seen some kickers that are used that are benign because we want to please God, and we want our friends to please God. And some are not so benign. They become ways that one gets power over other people, the ways that one can build an empire. The way one can increase the offerings. And it goes on and on and on.

Yesterday I told you about a young man who asked me about going to a church. They had called him, and he was for, he didn't like me, but his friend said, "Ask Steve." And so he did, and it was obvious he'd rather be talking to somebody else. But I said to him, "Tell me about the church." And he went down the list of the sins in the church.

And then he said, "Do you think I ought to go?" And I said, "No, I don't." And he said, "Why?" And I said, "Because you don't have enough love to cover their sin." And he hung up. You he created a church where the corporate culture removed us.

And whose reputation is such that anybody who has ever sinned, failed, or fallen will avoid that church the way a cat avoids a stove. A cat burned by a hot stove will never go near a hot stove again. That cat won't go near a cold one either.

Guys, it's important that we leave the church door open for everybody. The clean and the dirty, the failures and those that are seen by the world as successful. The sinners and those who are not known as sinners. Those who have really messed it up and those who haven't been caught. That's what the church is supposed to be about. And make sure that the door is left open.

I want you to know that I'm pro-life. And I think that it's the most significant social issue of our time. I speak at pro-life conferences sometimes. I am very clear on my stand.

I have a friend who doesn't let his congregation, or he tells his congregation not to, some do anyway, go to pro-life rallies where they have the signs and stand on the highway and stand for life. And I said, "Why don't you want them to go to that?"

He said, "The problem is when they're in one of those marches, when the cars go by, some of the people in the cars agree with the stand they're taking. And they do a thumbs up sign, and that's good. But there are others in those cars who have had an abortion, who have really seen their life come apart, who've gone through so much that is so painful."

And then he said, "Those people who see you march will not come anywhere near a church." Now I don't agree with his conclusion, but I get his point. It's very important and sometimes the kickers get in the way.

And sometimes our kickers are the ones that slam the door of the church in the face of the people who need to be there because the church is not a gathering place of wonderful, nice, pure, obedient, faithful people. Listen up. The church is a gathering place for sinners. It's Sinners Anonymous.

You've probably noticed that happening in the church. There's a kind of weird Christian masochism found in some Christians who aren't happy unless they're miserable. Those Christians are drawn to churches that create guilt, shame, fear, and regret.

If those kinds of Christians are clear enough about their shame, confess their sin and guilt enough, express their fear in terms that demonize those who caused it, and share regret in a Sunday school class devoted to the offended and the angry, they are sometimes made leaders and teachers. And the tribe of kickers grows and prospers.

Something just dawned on me. I thought about all that I've been teaching on this subject of kickers. And frankly, I feel good about it. It's called self-righteousness. And there is much to be said for self-righteousness. It makes self-righteous people feel good about their righteousness.

I just thought of the times I've been the head kicker for all the wrong reasons. So that you know, I've repented and will move on to some other lies that people believe. This is another one. Sometimes we as Christians believe lies that define us wrongly.

Then God said, and this is Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." And a lie that we believe is this: "You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny."

I have a friend with a prison ministry. He once asked at a gathering of prison inmates, "How many of you had a mother or a father who said to you, 'Someday you're going to end up in jail?'" To my friend's surprise, almost every one of the prisoners raised their hands.

Once we've been defined by others, parents or teachers or preachers or authority figures, we often become the personification of that definition. In fact, throughout our lives, what we do is we bounce who we are off on those who define us. How they define us then becomes the reality of how we define ourselves.

My father didn't become a Christian until shortly before his death. But he was great at two things: playing pool and loving his sons. People in my hometown would ask, "Who is the best pool player in town?" The answer was always, "Brownie when he's sober." And then the second question, "Who's the second best pool player in town?" The answer was always, "Brownie when he's drunk."

It was never asked, but it would have been a good question: "Who loves his children the best in this town?" That answer would have been the same as the one referencing my father's pool playing. Brownie, drunk or sober.

At our father's funeral, as my brother Ron and I stood in the receiving line over and over and over again, we heard from so many who said, "You boys know how much your father loved you." Our father carried photographs of us in his wallet and showed them to everybody.

My late brother was a district attorney in our congressional district. And I was and am the preacher. Our father would often brag, "I have two sons. One's a lawyer and one's a preacher and I'll never have a problem that one of my sons won't be able to fix."

As a kid, I worked as a paperboy delivering newspapers every morning. I still remember when we paperboys stole cherry pies from the local supermarket. And some of the others would say, "Man, if my father finds out about this, I'm going to be history. He'll kill me." I never thought that. I thought, "If my father finds out, he'll love me." And that's harder.

And it is from my father's love that I have learned to define myself by God's love. Hey, you think about that. Amen.

Matthew: Thanks, Steve. That wraps up our study for this week. If you're enjoying this new series like I am, I have some good news. You can stream all of these episodes for free at keylife.org/notmad. Great way to dive deeper into this content and a simple way to share the series with a friend. Again, that's keylife.org/notmad. And tomorrow, we'll have Friday Q&A, and that's when Steve and Pete will answer this question. Does God still heal? Join us for that.

Well, Jesus said we would know the truth and we would be free indeed, as in free-free, like no kickers, no catches. Just like we discussed this week, but just how easily we forget that, right? And that's why we love to send you a free booklet called Radical Freedom, Surprising Faithfulness. It's a newly reprinted excerpt from Steve's classic book on radical grace called A Scandalous Freedom. Get your free copy right now by calling us at 1-800-KEYLIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433. You can also email Steve at keylife.org to ask for that booklet, or to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, ask for your free copy of the booklet called Radical Freedom, Surprising Faithfulness.

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