God can do anything He wants. Literally anything. We can't even comprehend His power, let alone match it.

But when it comes to the things most important to us, for some reason we try to limit His power. Yes, He can create the universe, raise the dead, multiply fish and bread, but what is that to us?!

We think this one thing in our life is the one thing God can't handle. We trust ourselves to step up and handle a problem that we think is too big for Almighty God. It really is comically stupid.

We are naturally bent towards comparing ourselves to others. How skilled are we at certain tasks? How kind are we towards others? How much have we been blessed?

Looking only at ourselves doesn't tell us much. We need to know the answers to these questions for other people to know how we measure up.

Very little can come out of this. We either find ways to be jealous of others or find ways to feel superior to them.

But when we compare ourselves to Jesus, there's no room for either. He holds all the power, all the glory, all the knowledge, and all the love. We will never "out know" Him, or be able to "out power" Him, and we most certainly will never be able to "out love" Him.

He is the only standard worth chasing.

Sometimes we give our best effort, and things don't work out. Other times they don't work out because we don't give them our best effort.

I've honestly never known which was harder to deal with. On one hand, you have to deal with regret when you know you could have tried harder. But on the other, when your best wasn't good enough, it's a downright humiliating thing to have to accept.

Both are hard to live with, but neither can outrun God's grace. God's grace far exceeds our best efforts or our failures. More than our effort, God desires our hearts, to put our faith in Him and know that His best efforts always work out.

There's a scene from an old baseball movie called Moneyball. In the scene, a player hits a ball deep into the outfield and immediately runs as fast as he can towards first base with no regard for the ball.

As he rounds first, he trips over the bag into an embarrassing 15-foot barrel roll. Crawling frantically back towards first base, he looks up to opposing players and his own coaches' playful laughter at his expense. More embarrassing than his fall, was that he hadn't even realized that he'd hit the ball 60 feet over the fence. 

It's easy to get so caught up in our search for God's will that we forget that, by accepting His salvation, His will for our life is already fulfilled, and we've received His ultimate gift. Our search should now be for how we respond to the grace He has shown us. 

Contentment isn't about being satisfied with what God has given us. It's about realizing that He has already given us the only thing that matters.

The more we wrap our hearts around this concept, the less we see value in anything but Him and Him alone, and the more we rest in Him calling the shots from here. 

What did Paul mean when he said "to live is Christ"? Charlie Kirk knew.

Very few people exemplify Christlikeness as well as Charlie did. He spoke the truth with more grace and love than most can manage these days.

He stood firm teaching the word of God courageously, never alarmed by the many opponents to his purpose. He worked fearlessly, and patiently, to try to unify a crooked and perverse generation.

He didn’t lay down his life voluntarily, but he was obedient to the point of death.  

We lost a bright light in a dark world yesterday, but his life didn’t end. Charlie’s life was eternal from the moment he surrendered it to Jesus. Our loss was his ultimate gain, and I am grateful for his faithful service to the Gospel.

There's a subtle, but huge difference, between knowing about God, and having a personal relationship with Him.

You can know that God is all powerful and all knowing, without experiencing the peace that comes from trusting Him. 

You can know that God forgives sin, without experiencing the grace of His forgiveness for the worst thing you've ever done. 

You can know that God wants you to have joy, without experiencing the patience He shows while you fight His plans to provide it. 

You can know that Jesus paid for your access to this relationship, without feeling the love that compelled Him to pay such a price.

Knowing God, vs. knowing about God, is a distinction that makes all the difference. 

As I grow closer to the Lord, the more I am marveled by His creation around us. I love to point out nice sunsets to the kids, or find a good place to go for a walk away from the man made stuff. 

But it can be easy to forget that of all of God's creation, we are His most precious. He created the world around us to show us His power, but He created us to show us His love. 

How can we be a light that points others to His love the same way the sun points us to His power? 

Serving God isn't an obligation. It's a priviledge, one given by Him and Him alone. God doesn't take church attendance. He doesn't count Hail Mary's. We aren't credited with righteousness based on mission trips or Sunday school. We are credited by grace alone, through faith alone. 

We are natually born scorekeepers. We appreciate that Jesus wiped out the bad that we've done. But we still want Him to credit us for the good He's done through us. 

He doesn't need us. He can do anything, any way He chooses. And He chooses, above all else, to have a relationship with us. 

He paid all He possibly could to offer us this gift, and we expect a pat on the back for accepting it.  

Have you ever gone out to eat and filled up so much on the bread that you didn't have room for the entree? How frustrating is that!? Load up so much on the free bread that you only have room for 3 bites of the main course. Worst of all, the bread only lasts about 2 hours. Then you're hungry again and settling for a $40 microwaved steak. 

The same thing can happen in our spiritual lives. In our haste to be satisfied, we fill up on the carb loaded junk, leaving no room for God to truly satisfy us. 

More often than I want to admit, I'm asking how I can seek God so He will give me what I think I need, forgetting that seeking God is all that I need. 

I'm the world's worst for keeping my car on empty. My theory is that I get better gas milage by keeping my fuel load light. $10 bucks at a time, every day or so, that's my game plan. 

But apparently the shelf life on a 4-runner's fuel sensor is about 213,000 miles. So I recently started playing the old odometer game. Fill up, reset the odometer, and keep the odometer below 400. Now I'm not quite so confident in my splash-and-go stategy. I check the odometer more often than I check my mirrors, and if it hits triple digits I start second guessing if I remembered to reset it.

We can do the same thing with our spiritual tank. If we're not careful, we start relying on the fuel light to tell us when we're getting low. But God didn't create us to run on fumes. His desire is to fill us with the Spirit so we can fully enjoy the fellowship with Him!