Hey, I'm Lisa Whittle and welcome to the Jesus Over Everything show, affectionately known as Joe, where around here you will always hear honest conversations about life, faith, and true strength, courage, and love in the midst of our real everyday life.

It's our last week in the month-long look at Saul and his example of usability.

So much to learn from him about what not to do, honestly,

so we can go into this year and be more used by God than ever before.

I think it's an important thing to do.

Talking today about denial versus development.

What happens in those moments in our life when we get hit with hard

things? How can a choice to go one way instead of the other result in being less usable in the

kingdom of God? Well, it can and I want to talk through it. So if you're in, I'm in, and let's get into it.

It's funny to me how choice is something I think a lot of us love until it doesn't go our way,

or until it's a hard choice, or until we have to face the consequences of our choices.

We love choice until we come to that moment. When it comes to usability, I think we want it to be far more

about prayers for God to use us.

And then if he doesn't in the way we think he should, we wonder and wonder why not and assume it's because he's withholding from us or doesn't think we are worthy, things we talked about this month already on here.

And it becomes less about what we may have done that has thwarted that process. Now, in this culture,

we don't want to talk about consequences. We don't want to take any responsibility for how

something may be something we've done. We don't want anyone to hold us accountable. We don't want

to hear that the reason for something might be because of our own actions. This is why the gospel

is less popular than ever. And gospel is less popular than ever,

and churches are less popular than ever. And messages of truth are less popular than ever.

They are offensive to people who want to be placated in sin, and that's just the reality of it.

And we can all be that way, me and myself included. And also, side note, the faith culture has been strict at best

...