I love inspirational speakers. They always make you feel like you can do anything and do it with great success. They skillfully work on determination for weak-willed people and get-up-and-get-going for procrastinators. I fall into both categories. If the speaker is really good, he/she will do their inspiration without overworking the normal guilt response of those who aren’t determined or who do procrastinate. Inspirational leaders focus on human strengths and human abilities in the belief that right actions produce right results. In a perfect world, that might be true, but we live in a human world that is fraught with things like interdependence and deep seated levels of failure the Bible calls sin.

Stewardship is the area of life available to the inspired. We do the best we can in the best ways we know with the strongest determination we can muster in all the ways we have opportunity. At some point life brings each person to the point of recognizing that their absolute best isn’t enough. History is replete with great ones who did amazing things, far beyond their peers. History also records their failures and the problems which kept them from complete success or total respect.

Now, in our politically correct world, we are tearing down monuments to men and women who were great successes and great failures combined in an individual. Robber barons built great economic empires while being Hitleristic in the way they treated others to build their empires. They had skills to build, but not to maintain and grow in healthy ways. History proves with its continuing testimony that even the greatest among us are flawed.

How do or can humans deal with their humanity? They have to find someone or something greater to lead them. They find something greater in ideals, philosophies, or idols. Each of these are limited to human ability or insight. History also shows us that humanity has been searching with, and fighting with, their images of God throughout their time on planet earth. Gods come in all forms, religions, descriptions, philosophies, and things.

Humans have made religions related to man made objects in addition to all the non tangible things and ideas they can conceive. The first point of sorting comes down to man made and controlled or God made and only able to be controlled by God? To truly find something greater, they have to find God because only God can be greater than any human can be and greater than any or all humanity can provide and (most importantly) can communicate for Himself.

My opinion is that if man can make it or control it, it isn’t God. That creates a limitation for the inspirational speakers. They can only deal with the man side. They make errors if they inspire men to act in ways that will make God respond in a dependable way. Men controlling God by their behavior makes men god instead of God being God. Humans can be good stewards of their behavior, attitudes, and actions, but they can’t be God on their best day with their greatest skills and their hearts and attitudes as close to perfect as is possible for humans. God is beyond humanity. He is not manipulated by human behavior or attitudes.

The Bible is an amazing book. It shows humans in every state, from great to nightmarish, in connection with God. It can, to some degree, be summarized in one word, relationship. God wants and works to have relationship with mankind. He has a plan with or without man’s cooperation. The Bible shows that man is man and God is God, but there is a divine connection between the two created by and maintained by God who is the only one who can keep a relationship with humans who keep breaking it.