Trusting and Believing: Devotions From Time of GraceSample

How Does God Help Me to Believe?
He tells me the truth about myself

Call me naïve, but there was a time when I didn’t know what an “intervention” was. An intervention is a circle of friends who gang up on an alcoholic or drug abuser to tell him the truth, to break down his rationalizations and protective defenses, and get the message through that he is on the path of self-destruction.

All of us--every man, woman, and child who ever lived--is a sinaholic, addicted to the lies and ways of Satan and hostile to God. St. Paul performed an intervention on one of the congregations he had helped to create: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. . . . Like the rest, we were by nature objects of [God’s] wrath” (Ephesians 2:1,3).

This bad news has a good purpose. I can’t love a Savior if I don’t think I need a Savior. I can’t believe in a Savior if I think I can tough it out by myself. I can’t worship a Savior until I stop worshiping myself. Even though it hurts, we all need God’s Word to tell us the truth about ourselves. Hi--my name is Mark, and I’m a sinaholic.