dumb sheep dave

Promoting Jesus Dependency

  • Only a proud believer,

    fears humiliation.  A humble believer has a healthy indifference toward failure, success, mediocrity, whatever the outcome.  A proud believer, shepherd, independent, controlling-type, leaning on his own understanding/wisdom, can only tolerate excellence, and is to be pitied above all, trapped in a dreadful, performance prison.  A dumb sheep is fine with whatever the outcome of his…

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  • When I say no to my flesh’s desire,

    for a cool, fast car, I’m not denying myself happiness. I’m denying I will FIND happiness that way. The flesh, ShepherdDave, used to have me convinced that its pathway to happiness worked. It does not. Lie. Leads to addictive behavior for a wounded soul, and I still have an open, festering wound on my soul…

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  • What about obedience, Dave?

    What about obedience, Dave? A friend emailed me after last week’s email about a) obey, b) believe, c) confess, and wanted me to address obedience.  I did address obedience, but it’s not real clear, I admit.  Here’s what I think about obedience: When we try to obey, follow Jesus, live the Christian life, in our…

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  • My responsibility is to,

    a) obey, b) believe, c) confess.  Answer: confess.  I cannot generate belief/faith, because faith is a gift from Above.  It is not like a muscle that I exercise.  I don’t exercise/generate faith from within myself.  It is a gift.  But I can confess, when convicted of my sin of unbelief.  When I attempt to be…

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  • What if the Bible isn’t true,

    that Jewish people invented the concept of God to make life easier?  And Jesus is a hoax?  That no God exists who is great enough to control every tiny decision of trillions and trillions of living creatures on land and sea of Planet Earth, along with all the thinking of all humans all the time? …

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  • Being loved = happiness.

    My flesh thinks I’ll find love from accomplishing.  Love from others, love from self.  But this is conditional love.  Selfish.  Prideful.  And the flesh is a bottomless pit of need — it will never be satisfied through performance-based, conditional love.  Self-contempt-avoidance becomes the defining motivation on the fleshly path to happiness.  Ever striving, never arriving. …

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  • The worst thing about being DumbSheepDave,

    is being humble.  My flesh hates the lowly place, clueless place, weak place, childlike place.  So it’s initially painful when the Spirit freshly convicts me of my independence, and I’m moved from being confident, competitive JudgeDave/ShepherdDave, analyzer/critic of all, down, down, down, to lowly DumbSheepDave, pitied by the strong, but indifferent to their pity.  Enabled…

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  • My flesh thinks I will find love,

    from performance/somebodiness, which is a conditional form of love, but my soul wants something better — unconditional love.  The flesh’s strategy for happiness depends on conditional love from others and self, a strategy that leaves me empty, unsatisfied.  By contrast, the Jesus-dependent’s strategy for happiness is to experience unconditional love from Jesus, and from self.  …

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  • The danger of being a great guy,

    is that pre-believers just think, “Dave’s a great guy.”  They are not wowed by Jesus, but by me.  They will only be wowed by the Jesus in me, if they know the real me.  They will only know the real me if I invite them into the closet of my soul, to discover the real…

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  • Jesus, You are not Lord,

    of us believers.  We are the lords of our lives.  We know what’s best for ourselves and others.  So we want You to bless our plans/agenda for ministry.  Our joy and peace depend on our circumstances, how our ministry is going, how well we’re obeying, or trusting, all about us, instead of Your enjoyment of…

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