dumb sheep dave

Promoting Jesus Dependency

  • Tormented by bad decisions.

    My flesh demands that I be perfect in every decision I make.  Sometimes I’m tormented by bad decisions, even tiny ones, but I always get LIFE from good ones, big or small.  It’s easy to extend grace to someone I like who makes a bad decision, but I struggle to extend that same grace to…

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  • Why always talk about sin, Dave?

    Why not be more positive?  Fair question.  Seems to me the Church has dumbed down the law and dumbed down sin, like the Pharisees did, so the Christian life seems doable, possible, the commands keepable.  We believers seem to have the impression that sin is something we occasionally do, when in fact, we never stop…

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  • Butch, the town drunk.

    This is a email prayer update I received last Thursday from a pastor I’ve mentored for twenty-five years, has an inner-city church in a store front, and lives next door. –WeakDave, trying to get Jesus to be so contagious in us believers that we love pre-believers into the Kingdom To receive my weekly updates, email…

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  • These are not Dave’s circumstances,

    but Jesus’ circumstances.  Designed by Him to perfectly meet my needs, His plan, His glory, and my good.  Dave is not sovereign over his life; Jesus is.  My flesh doesn’t agree, nor the devil, nor the world, and prefers me thinking of them as my circumstances, for Dave to encounter by himself, as an orphan/shepherd/CEO/arrogant/self-reliant.  Why?  So…

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  • Paul Tripp’s story.

    I mentor lots of pastors, and Paul Tripp’s story is not an unusual one, though many pastors are as clueless as Paul was.   I have not mentored Paul — just read his story.  We have come to expect/demand that our pastors be the together ones, and they had better not disappoint us, and this encourages…

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  • Whenever I’m trying to prove myself,

    to myself or others, that’s an indication that I’m ashamed of who I am, don’t feel good enough as a human being, or believer, or hubby, or dad.  Prove myself?  Winning, achieving, noticing the failure of others as a strategy to feel better about myself, and if the others are successful, any little chink in…

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  • The idol nobody confesses.

    The idol of different.  Huh?  Wanting a change of scenery, different clothes, different car, different motorcycle, different home, different location or vacation, different/newer technology, different job, or more success or different twist to my present job, different experience, different arrangement of furniture, different wall color, different church, different self.  Be somewhere else, doing something else,…

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  • An agendified driver

    knows what’s best for himself, and others, and gets irritated with a little old lady in a Buick ahead of him on a two-lane road with no-passing lines, driving five miles an hour under the speed limit.  So they both have to wait at the next traffic light.  Grrrr. AgendifiedDave/JudgeDave/ShepherdDave ain’t got a humble bone…

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  • Satan doesn’t want me to see,

    the sickness of the Church, but once I see it, he changes his strategy, tempting me to feel good about myself for my insight, smug in my superior and radical commitment, tempting me to self-righteously go about trying to make a difference as a radical, in the power of me.  Like the Pharisees: so confident,…

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  • The pride nobody confesses.

    From mentoring lots of believers over the years, especially grace-junkies, I’m struck by the prevalence of unconfessed self-contempt.  Why is self-contempt not viewed as the prideful sin it is?  I think it’s because it seems right to hate yourself when you sin.  But it’s not.  A humble believer extends grace to self, just like Jesus…

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