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Matthew: Key Life is all about God's radical grace. Grace that has dirt under its fingernails and laugh lines on its face. If you want the Bible to be a book of rules, you may want to stop listening now. But if you're hungry for the truth that will make you free, welcome to Key Life.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. If you're just joining us, for the past few weeks, we've been talking about some of the specifics, the basics, of the Christian faith. And we've covered a bunch of topics. And this week and next week, and maybe the week after, we're going to talk about how Christians are human too.

I mentioned it the last time we were in this series, but we're going to get into some details today. Before we do that, first, I hope you had a good weekend and I hope your pastor's sermon was as good as my pastor's sermon. Now, let's pray.

Father, we come into your presence, surprised always that we're here. They lied to us. They told us there's so many things we needed to do to get your attention and your love. And nobody told us the truth that we needed to do nothing and that you had done everything.

We praise you for that. We praise you for your invitation when we were dirty to come to your house, to the throne room of the universe. Father, you know everybody who's listening to this broadcast. You know the hard stuff and the easy stuff. You know the tears and the laughter, and you're God, the God of all of it.

Remind us that you're sufficient for every need. And Father, as always, we pray for the one who teaches on this broadcast that you would forgive him his sins because they're many, we would see Jesus and him only. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Second Corinthians 12:9 says this, and it's kind of surprising. You'll remember in this particular passage that the Apostle Paul had a thorn in the flesh. And nobody knows exactly what that was. God told him not to say so that we could identify with Paul and what he was going through.

At any rate, he said he had a thorn in the flesh and he went to God and asked him repeatedly to remove it. And God said, "I'm not going to do that." And then he said, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

You know, I'm an old guy and I thought that by now, I'd be a lot better than I was when I was young. Certainly a lot better than I am right now. I really had these unrealistic expectations of how I was going to pray and fast and serve. Maybe go on the mission field, burn out for God, stand for him in the hard places, speak the truth always, never sin, and if I do, deal with it with the Holy Spirit. Becoming more and more sanctified, more and more perfect, more and more Christian.

Didn't happen. And I have two alternatives. The first is, I was never saved. Now, some of you don't think I am, but I want you to know, unless Jesus lied, I belong to him. I'm a Christian, saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. That's settled. I have no doubts about my own assurance. I know that's true.

The second alternative is that I had expectations that were far too high. The Bible is clear about that, by the way. If you spend much time in the Bible, one of the things you'll notice is that God always tells the truth about his leaders.

I mean, if I were doing a book that was going to inspire and encourage and promote the Christian faith and commitment and obedience, I would have left out about half of the Bible. Because they're a bunch of scoundrels. Did you know that this whole thing, this covenant family relationship we have with God, called the church. Did you know that it started with a lie? It started, it started with a guy who wanted his wife to sleep with the king and he told the king that his wife was his sister.

And then, well, I could go on. And then you got David, the man who is after God's heart. A murderer, an adulterer. You move into the prophets and you get Jeremiah who was weak, a wuss. God had to admonish him, "You're going to you you you can't run with anybody and you think you're going to run with horses?" And then you get prophets who were depressed. You get prophets who thought they were just going to leave because nobody was listening to them.

And then you move into the New Testament and you got all these ragamuffins that Jesus taught to be his disciples. He needed a better HR department, frankly. I mean, a couple of them were in motorcycle gangs, or at least the first-century equivalent of that. The sons of thunder. One was a liar. One denied Jesus three times. Everybody ran when the going got tough.

I mean, you say you get to Paul, man, and you think, "Well, at least we got one who was always faithful." Read Romans 8 and the confession of the Apostle Paul about his present sin. And fights. You wouldn't I mean, you think your church has divisions, they they had that in steroids in the early church.

And I keep thinking, "God, leave that stuff out." You don't have to air the dirty laundry in front of the world. They already don't like us. And now you lift up these people? What are you doing? And God says, "I want everybody to know that everybody's welcome and everybody's human."

And so we're going to spend some time for this week and next week talking about how it's okay to be human. And it's necessary. I had a man come to me who was whenever they're zealous at the beginning, that scares the bit out of me. I'm going to I'm going to serve Christ and change the world. I get that kind of thing a lot and I see it and I'm pleased with the heart, but want to say, "Look,".

When you hit a wall, when when you've failed, when you've really blown it and blown it big, remember the prodigal son. Who blew it big and came back home expecting to be a hired servant and instead was given a party. That's what the Bible is all about. And in that context where power is made perfect in weakness, we do get better.

We handle things better. We walk closer. When we fail, we get up quicker. That's called sanctification. We're more obedient than we used to be. I'm not what I wanted to be, but I'm not what I was. And I don't know how it happened. I can see because I asked God to show me. I said, "You've always shown me my sin and I'm aware of those. Would you let me see the places where you're doing some good stuff in me and I'm better than I was?"

Now, he doesn't dump that on me because I have a tendency to self-righteousness and he knows that if I take an inch, I'll grab a whole mile. But he's begun to show me places where I love more than I did, where I'm more obedient than I was, where I care about people more than I used to care about people, where I speak truth in the hard places more than I used to. And and those moments of revelation in my life are encouraging. And they're helpful and they're happening in your life too.

But with all of that being said, Christians are human too. If you stick a Christian with a pin, the Christian's going to bleed just like everybody else. Christians get cancer. Christians get angry. Christians fail. Christians make mistakes. Christians sin. Christians doubt. Christians have a hard time sometimes. And that's the normal Christian life.

It's not the victorious Christian life. You get that when you get home. But it's normal. It's really okay to be human. And I'm going to tell you why over the next two or three weeks. Meanwhile, you think about that. Amen.

Matthew: Christians are humans too. Boy, ain't that the truth? Thanks, Steve. We are resuming our special teaching series called Welcome to the Family. It's a kind of back-to-the-basics of the Christian faith, kind of a primer for new believers and a much-needed refresher for the rest of us. More tomorrow, be sure to join us.

And in case you are just joining us on this journey, the Welcome to the Family series is based on Steve's book of the same name. I'm not a betting man, but I think there's a good chance that if you're enjoying this series, you will enjoy the book too. And check this out, for a gift of $15 or more to Key Life, that book is our gift to you. So call us at 1-800 Key Life, that's 1-800-539-5433. You could also email Steve at keylife.org to order that book or to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the US and Canada. Again, the name of the book is Welcome to the Family.

And finally, a question for you. Would you join in the work of Key Life by giving? We've made it pretty easy. Just charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. And of course, you can now give safely and securely by text. Just pick up your phone and text Key Life to 28950. And if you can't give right now, listen, all good, we get it. But if you would, please do pray for us, would you? Always needed, always appreciated. Thanks. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and Force in Canada and Key Life is a listener-supported production of Key Life Network.