If you're

If you've ever been caught in a riptide, you know how easy it is to be carried away by the tide and never realize it until you look back toward the shore.

Today on Truth for Life, we'll see how easy it is to get swept up in the surrounding culture if we're not careful.

Alistair Begg is teaching from 2 Corinthians chapter 2, beginning with verse 12.

He's titled today's message, Inadiquacy, the surprising secret to being useful to God.

I want to approach a subject from our four perspectives.

First of all, to consider the biblical framework that underpins the thesis in the title,

then to change gears from that and move to the cultural setting, which is

ours in seeking to understand the Bible, then to change gears again and to ask a question

concerning the contemporary church in relationship to the biblical framework and the cultural

setting, and then finally to look at the whole matter in relationship to the biblical framework and the cultural setting,

and then finally, to look at the whole matter in relationship to ourselves as individuals.

Where then does the contemporary church fall in relationship to these things?

Would it be fair to say that the church is firmly grounded in its

understanding of inadequacy as a foundation for usefulness? Or do you think that the church has

capitulated to the spirit of the age, and that the average seminarian is about to launch himself or herself

on an unsuspecting church,

and let them all know how brilliant she is,

or how terrific he is, and how they just can't wait to discover

it. You will recall that when Nehemiah was assigned the task for the rebuilding of the walls

and the re-hanging of the gates in the broken down context of Jerusalem.

The first thing that he did was pray. Then he did a reconnaissance. And after his

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