Key Life Network

Steve Brown: I'm not good enough. You already knew that. Let's talk. I'm Key Life.

Guest (Male): 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'll make you free, welcome to Key Life.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. If you're just joining us, we're spending some time. By the way, I hope you had a great weekend and I hope your pastor's sermon was as good as my pastor's sermon.

As I was saying before I interrupted myself, we are looking at a new book, I'm going to keep doing this until I get it right. And it's only been out a couple of weeks and you can get it most anywhere. You can get it from us or you can get it from amazon.com. You can get the actual book there and you get an e-book for your Kindle if you have one. And I hope you get it.

Frankly, some of it when I read it causes me to blush. And then some of it's not half bad, and some of it's so good that I can't believe I wrote it. So, and I don't know which is which. So, I hope you get the book. The title of the book, of course, is "God's Not Mad at You: Confronting the Lies of Guilt, Shame, Fear, and Regret."

And in some ways, certainly with me, it can be a life-changing book. And what we're doing, we're looking at some of those themes, and today we're going to start with a new lie and we're going to look at lies that neutralize us. And the lie is this: you're not good enough and you don't know enough.

Before we study, let's pray.

Father, we come into your presence amazed that we're here. We really thought we had to be more religious and better and obedient and faithful and nice in order to get access to you. And then we couldn't, and we figured there was a sign right before your throne that said "no access." Until you said, "Welcome, child. Welcome." And we came running, not because we're good, but because we're yours.

Father, you know everybody who's listening to this broadcast. There's some people that are a mother of hurt and there's some people doing fine. Remind us that you're sovereign over both, the good and the bad, the tears and the laughter. And we're glad you are. Not only sovereign all the time, but good all the time.

And as always, Father, we pray for the one who teaches on this broadcast. Forgive him his sins, because they're many. We would see Jesus and him only. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

There are lies, and they come from the pit of hell, and they smell like smoke that keep us from being what Jesus has called us to be. A witness to him in the world, the smell of Jesus in places where nobody ever talks about him. The truth of the Gospel that we're great sinners and they're great sinners, and we all could find a great savior.

Let me give you, let me give you a verse and then we'll dig in. It's from 2 Corinthians 4:7. But, I love this verse. "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surprising power belongs to God and not to us."

Did you hear about the woodpecker pecking on a tree when lightning struck that tree? He survived, and then he called all of his friends to come and see the result of his pecking prowess. The woodpecker's arrogance is on steroids.

And many Christians, by the way, face the opposite. Humility. Harry and the humble habit, humility on steroids. We don't even peck, as it were.

In a Guideposts magazine article, number, well, it was in 2024 by Bill Courtney, who's a coach with a podcast, "An Army of Normal Folks." He lists and addresses the barriers to accomplishment. To wit: "The problem is too big." "What can somebody like me do?" "And I don't know how."

The barriers addressed in scripture for believers are similar but slightly different. When we learn, listen up, when we learn to deal with those barriers, it is absolutely amazing, surprising at what happens.

I remember the first time I ever shared my faith in Christ. Actually, I didn't feel good enough to do that, and I certainly was sure I didn't know enough to do that, and I certainly didn't know how to do that. But I did it. And then I made an offer. "Would you, how could you, maybe receive Christ?"

And I remember he said, "Absolutely. Can we pray right now?" And I was blown away. Pastors and religious leaders often quote that 20% of Christians do 100% of the work. I don't know where that statistic comes from, but it's probably pretty close to the truth.

The reason the 80% and their lack of involvement is there, are the reasons are probably many. But at the heart of all of it is a belief that to be an effective Christian, one must meet certain requirements, which so many Christians think they don't meet.

So very many of us believe we aren't good enough, don't know enough, and aren't skilled enough to do what's needed. If Christians get over that feeling, we're going to be dangerous.

Scripture, by the way, was not written for experts and academic theologians. Much of scripture was written from prison cells rather than from churches or cloistered academic offices. Maybe our words would be more powerful if we spoke from prison.

Be that as it may, scripture was written by and for dirt under the fingernails believers. Institutional Christianity, as with any institution, requires organization and planning. So, the wandering tribe of tent dwellers in the Old Testament, and by and large the uneducated fishing buddies and nobodies in the New Testament have maybe by necessity morphed into religious institutions, technical religious language, and in-the-know leaders.

The institutions include formal recognition, ordination and PhDs, religious graduate schools, seminaries, and powerful structures of influence. Now, before we go any further, I suspect that I ought to say that I'm part of that. And not only that, I understand it and sometimes even the necessity.

But there's a great danger in forgetting the soil in which we were grown. There is a great danger in forgetting our heritage. As a matter of fact, when I comment on sermons, and I've done that for years as a professor in a graduate school of theology, a seminary, I was a professor of communications and that meant that I, that I listened to more sermons than you can possibly imagine. Often preached by young people who had never preached before and were as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

And I remember one young man said to me, "Dr. Brown, I want you to be hard on me. I can take it." And I thought to myself, "Son, if I told you the truth, you would go into vinyl repair and give up preaching." But as a matter of fact, they needed to recognize that what they felt was what their people felt. Dirt under the fingernails, hard places, breaking, sin, fear, anxiety. And I would tell those students, and they didn't always like it, "Listen, don't preach to the professors at the seminary. Preach to real people with real problems." You think about that. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thanks, Steve. As you may know, we've been exploring the lies of guilt, shame, fear, and regret. The subject of Steve's new book. And this week we're looking at the specific lies, "You're not good enough and you don't know enough." Have you confronted those thoughts before? If so, then be sure to join us all this week.

So, if I were to say the kindness of Jesus heals our sin, shame, and weakness, you would say, "But of course." But how does that process actually work? Well, we spoke about that recently with author Scott Sauls on Steve Brown, etc. It was a beautiful conversation that I think will bring you a lot of hope and encouragement. If you want, we'll send you that whole episode on CD for free. Just call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433. You can also email Steve at keylife.org to order that CD, or to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the U.S. and Canada. Again, just ask for the CD featuring Scott Sauls.

And before you go, if you've been blessed by the work of Key Life, would you help share that blessing with others by giving as generously as you're able? You can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or you can simply text "Key Life" to 28950. And hey, if you can't give right now, or maybe you're not called to, all good. But if you think about it, please pray for us, would you? Thanks.

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