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Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew.

If you were listening yesterday, I introduced a new topic. The topic was the humanness of Christians.

I have been doing this for a long time. More than some of you have been alive. That means that as a pastor, as a counselor, and as a teacher, I have listened to a whole bunch of confessions. I cannot tell you how often I have said, "You too." How often I have realized that Christians fail just like everybody else.

The difference, and the only difference that makes a lot of difference, is Jesus himself. Paul knew that. In Romans 7, when he says something that I do not believe I would have said if I knew I was writing scripture. Paul said, "The good I want to do, I do not do."

Boy, me too. Then he said, "The evil I do not want to do is what I do." Me too. And you too.

I told you about the guy who came to see me and looked like the most miserable man I have ever met. As we talked, he had been making promises to Jesus. He promised that he would give his life completely to God. He promised that every opportunity he had, he would be a faithful witness. He promised that all of his actions, he would be clean and pure. He promised he would burn himself out for God.

As I said yesterday, Jesus was pleased with his heart. But there was a problem. As this young man tried to live his life, he got out into the real world. He found that no matter how hard he tried, he could not keep his promises.

There had been times when he knew he should have witnessed for Christ, but on those occasions, he had decided that silence was better and easier. He had not been absolutely pure and righteous. He had not really burned himself out for God. In fact, he had hardly gone near the flame.

Now, because he had failed so often, he came to tell me that he was giving the whole thing up. You know something? There are thousands of Christians just like this man who have a strong desire to follow Christ wherever he should lead and yet want to give it up when they find they are not strong enough or good enough or spiritual enough.

"God has just demanded too much," they say, and the impossibility of the whole enterprise either makes for hypocrites or failures. So I want to tell you some things I told this man.

The information that I am going to give you is important because it is biblical and because all Christians need on occasion to be reminded that they are human and sinful and struggling. The root of the difficulty is this: most of us feel that God cannot do without us. If we fail, then God will fail.

We have all heard the poem by Annie Johnson Flint which expresses this:

Christ has no hands but our hands to do his work today.

He has no feet but our feet to lead men in his way.

He has no tongues but our tongues to tell men how he died.

He has no help but our help to bring them to his side.

Balderdash. If you have been singing that hymn, quit it. Tell your choir director to leave it out and your worship leader to never make that a part of a worship service of God's people.

That is one of the greatest lies ever perpetrated on the Christian community. Everything does not depend on you, and the sooner each Christian learns that truth, the better.

One of the reasons Jesus formed the church was to make up the difference between what individuals ought to do and what they do. Somewhere, perhaps from those of us who do not make clear exactly what the Christian life involves, some new Christians and some older ones have gotten the idea that when they became Christians, they somehow became superhuman.

If they do not see superhuman qualities in their lives, they feel they must not really be Christians. Nothing could be further from the truth. In his position of new life, the Christian is, in fact, a completely new creature.

There is now the power to do and will many things that were not possible before. However, that does not mean that all of a sudden the Christian is not human anymore. Spiritual depression, failure, hurt, and sin are still possible for the Christian. A feeling that none of these things should ever happen to a Christian makes them even worse.

When you stick a Christian with a pin, he or she will bleed just like everybody else. If a Christian jumps off a 10-story building, he or she will die just like everybody else.

Some Christians do have financial problems, family problems, and health problems. Time after time I have heard Christians say, "I thought I was a Christian, but I know now that I was just being idealistic." In other words, they are saying, "I thought I was perfect."

Now I know that I am not. The danger is in equating being perfect with being a Christian. If you have been doing that, I have got some very good news for you: Christians are humans too.

Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine who is now in heaven. He was a dentist and he was an elder in a church I served in the Boston area.

After we got to know each other over a period of months and had decided to be honest with each other, he began to confess to me. He said when he was young, he went to a missions conference. The mission speaker at that conference had sent a challenge out for anybody who would go into world missions, who would go any place in the world to serve Christ in the mission of Christ in the world to disciple people, to baptize them, to raise them in the faith.

He said, "I stood up." Steve, I mentioned it. His name was Ed, and I said, "That was a good thing that you did that." He said, "Yeah, but I never did it."

He said, "Things started happening in my life. I was going to dental school, and my mother was really sick. There were financial problems and the church needed my help, so I never, ever even stepped one foot into the mission field, and I have felt guilty about that ever since."

I said, "Ed, you are fortunate to know me because you now know somebody who is going to tell you the truth. I expect you to listen very carefully because this is biblical, this is Christian, and this is what it is all about."

"Frankly, you would not have such a high opinion of yourself if you knew the truth about yourself. So, you are forgiven. God knew the day you stood at that missions conference that you were not going to be a missionary, and he loved you anyway."

Let me tell you the rest of the story because it has a happy ending. At that church that we served and where Ed was an elder, we had a prayer time on Sunday evenings after the Sunday evening service.

People would kneel and pray at the end of the service. I would go into my study, and when everybody who wanted to and had prayed, had finished, I turned the lights out and went home.

One night I was in my study, and I heard Ed shouting outside my study. He said, "Steve, you are not going to believe what happened. I was praying and asking God's forgiveness, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. I thought it was you, and I turned, and nobody was there. I am forgiven for being human."

Hey, you think about that. Amen.

Matthew: Thanks, Steve. That wraps up this week for our Welcome to the Family series. Want to remind you that you can listen to all of these episodes anytime you want for free. Just go to keylife.org/family.

Speaking of family, fam, have I got some exciting news. Matt Heard will be teaching next week, Monday through Thursday. Do not miss it. Of course, tomorrow, it is Friday Q&A with Steve and Pete. Tomorrow they will answer the challenging questions you have sent in, including this one: Has the millennium already happened? Tune in for that answer.

If you are at all like me, you sometimes struggle to forgive others. That is why I want you to meet author Micah Davis. We spoke with Micah recently on Steve Brown, etc. about how to give and receive forgiveness. Micah is refreshingly honest and practical in his approach.

If you could use some encouragement and insights on your forgiveness journey, the things Micah says are going to help. We will send you that whole show on CD for free. Just call us at 1-800-KEYLIFE. That is 1-800-539-5433. You can also email Steve at keylife.org to ask for that CD or to mail your request. Go to keylife.org/contact. Just ask for the free CD featuring Micah Davis.

Finally, if you would support Key Life, we would appreciate it. Just charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or you can give by text. Just text Key Life to 28950. That is Key Life one word or two, text that to 28950.

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