Just Continue That Thought...

A thought by Larry Osborne, (2009-04-04) from his book, Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith (Kindle Location 474). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book) Dave Roberts, our pastor here at Montrose Church said yesterday that each one of us have 3-4 blind spots in our personality.   We don’t see them but everyone else does.   Being arrogant could be one of those blind spots that a lot of us have.   And it's not a good one. Larry says, “It’s the ultimate blind spot. We never see ourselves as arrogant. We might admit to an occasional struggle with pride, but we never cop to full-blown arrogance. We never think we’re inappropriately looking down on others. We think we’re seeing things as they really are. We think the people we look down on really are beneath us.” Now that is not good is it? He goes one, “To keep from falling into that trap, I try to regularly ask mys

A thought by Larry Osborne, (2009-04-04) from his book, Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith (Kindle Locations 416-417). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book) Larry goes on, “We don’t always know the full story. All we see is the outside. There’s no way to see the heart. This means that a lot of our conclusions about people are flat-out wrong.” He then says, “Our spiritual comparisons are also incredibly biased. We have an amazing ability to compare things in a way that causes us to come out on top. And when we come out on top, it’s hard not to look down on people who don’t measure up. It’s at this point that pride becomes particularly dangerous.” And there is the key word, the one that is the problem.   The word is pride.   He then says something that is so important, “Unfortunately, many of us fail to grasp how dangerous pride is. We know that we shouldn’t look

A thought by Larry Osborne, (2009-04-04) from his book, Ten Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe (p. 147). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book) There are different valleys that come into our lives and there are different responses to them. Larry says, “ God sent me here valleys always call for hanging tough. Wiggling out or running away is never a good option. That's a lesson Jonah learned the hard way when he tried to avoid a dreaded assignment.”   In this Larry says, “Never judge the appropriateness of obedience by the short-term or even lifelong results. Judge it by eternity.”   Keep being obedient no matter what. Then he says, “ I messed up valleys call for a completely different response. They call for a serious change in direction. If a wrong turn got us there, it usually takes some major retracing of our steps to get us back where we need to be.”   He says, “Thankfully, most I messed up valleys