All of us yearn to be accepted, to be loved. This is a core need, part of our deepest being.

It doesn't take very long, as we walk along our life journey from day one, before something happens that results in the opposite experience for us: rejection. And we are wounded. For some of us, the wounds are very, very deep. For all of us, not being accepted in one way or another distorts how we feel about ourselves. We get the message that we are not worth being accepted. And a shadow begins to fall over our life.

My family lives in a place on this great globe where there is "big sky." For this I am grateful. In the high desert of central New Mexico our home is nestled up against the foothills of a mountain range behind us, while in the other three directions it is wide open spaces for many miles to other mountains and mesas far in the distance. And so at night we have a striking display of stars that I doubt can be rivaled by very many places on earth. Straight above our house the Milky Way makes its luminous swath across the dark night sky; and the rest of the huge expanse is spattered with countless stars - like pinpricks in black velvet through which we glimpse the light of heaven. I can lie in my bed, gaze at the beauty of the stars, and muse. And often when I do, one particular thought returns again and again to me. I hear a quiet question within, "Has any difficulty I've experienced or anything that has happened in my life (or in the affairs of men or the upheavals of nature anywhere on earth) made the stars fall?"

 There is a group of people on this earth who are the most disadvantaged of all people. It is not any of those who perhaps first come to our minds as "disadvantaged". It is the proud. The reason I make this statement is because if I am proud, then God is against me.

You or I may know a great deal about someone famous - innumerable facts about such things as his family, his childhood and personal history, major occurrences in his life, many of his actions as well as his thinking and decisions, and his character and values in general. If, however, you were to walk up to the door of his house or his office - say, for example, the Oval Office - simply declaring, "I know him!" and expecting a hearty welcome, you most likely would not be admitted anywhere near this person you "know" so well. Obviously there is a vast difference between knowing about someone and actually knowing that person. It is possible to have many opinions about God, but it is quite another thing to truly know God. 

Deep within the understanding of every man there is a consciousness of sin. Whatever men may want to label it, it is there - that sense of something not being right, that gnawing, discomforting thought that will not go away, that awareness within each individual that there is some unnamed blockage between what I am and what I should be. Any religion that ignores this fundamental fact of the human spirit cannot truly meet man's need.

Lies are cheap. They’re freely available and abundant anywhere and everywhere. But for the Truth there is always a price to pay.