Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, December 5th.

Today's podcast points us to the fact that a relationship to God through Christ is the only solid foundation for your life.

Now when I keep my ears open, it's very evident to me that our generation is one of negative, many self-destructive thinking.

There are more people today who are talking about I can't than there are talking about I can.

There are more people today who are gripped by fear than who are living by faith.

There are more people today who are caught up in pessimism rather than standing on the promises of God and believing that they can accomplish anything that God wants them to accomplish.

There are more people talking about their inadequacies than there are those who are industriously fulfilling God's will.

There are more people who are willing to settle for what they are than who are willing to strive for what God intended for them to be.

There are more people who believe that there are nobody than there are those who believe that really and truly are somebody because God is doing something in their life.

We have a mini, a small attitude, a small opinion of ourselves, a self-destructive attitude. I am a nobody. Therefore what can I do?

You see, that attitude we have of inadequacy, of a lack of self-worth, we don't deserve it.

There are no good. I don't know why God has been as good to Him as you see. On the one hand that looks pious and looks like humility, on the other hand it is the sense of an inadequate understanding of who we are, who God is and what His attitude toward us is.

You see, God is not blessed nor is He praised or glorified by His saints walking around saying, well I guess I'm just nobody. I never was anybody. I just never will be able to do anything. Oh praise God, I hope He'll help me.

That's not a sign of victory. That has nothing to do with humility. It is a false sense of piousness or it is an inadequate concept of ourselves.

Paul discovered something that all of us need to discover. And he got a new fresh glimpse of himself. And when he did, he said, I'm not what I have been. I'm not what I want to be and praise God, I'm not what I'm going to be.

But by the grace of God today, I am what I am. Now all of us ought to be able to say that. There are three things in the Scripture that I want you to notice. And if you notice where he plays this because he begins in this 15th chapter to defend his apostleship to the Corinthian church, they were always looking at him and wondering and questioning about him.

And once in a while you'll find Paul defending his apostleship. So he talks about the apostles and what the gospel is and the fact that he's one of them. And then if you'll notice in verse eight, he says he was almost born too late.

He says, and last of all, he that is Christ was seen of me also as of one born out of the time. Paul says, I almost missed it. If I had been born a generation later, I would have missed all of this. Then he says for I am the least of the apostles.

And he says, I'm not even fit to be called an apostle of Jesus Christ because I persecuted the church of God. Now there are three things in the Scripture I want you to notice and there are three parts to each one of them.

Number one. First of all, I want us to see three things about Paul here as as you see his sense of self-worth in the light of the grace of God developing. And the first one is the recognition of sin.

When Paul recalled what he had done, if you'll go back to Acts chapter nine for a moment. And you'll remember where Paul is and where he is on his way to. He says in Saul, who was then called Saul, yet breathing out threatening and slaughtered. That is he wasn't just going to persecute the Christians. He enjoyed talking about it.

Breathing out threatening and slaughtered. There was something that fulfilled his own innocence of being when he could persecute Christians. Breathing out threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, he went to the high priest and desired of him lettuce to Damascus, to the synagogue.

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