"Be careful not to let anyone rob you of this faith through a shallow and misleading philosophy" (Colossians 2:8).

There are some ideas which sound good - if you don't look too closely at what they're really saying. They say to us, "You have a problem. This is how you can sort things out for yourself." Really? We can sort things out for ourselves, can we? This is exactly what God's Word says we can't do. We need Jesus to sort things out for us. Without Him, we are lost. We try to sort things out for ourselves. What happens when it doesn't work? Do we just look for something else, some other way of sorting things for ourselves? or Do we consider the possibility that we've been starting from the wrong place. We're staring with "I", when we should be starting with God. What does "a shallow and misleading philosophy" do for us? It leads us to think that we can sort ourselves out, we can make something of ourselves. There's a problem with this kind of thinking. It's man-centred. It tells us we can do something about our problem. What if our problem is bigger than we can handle? What if we need God? That's where "a shallow and misleading philosophy" will never take us. It always tells us that we can solve our own problems. It never tells us that we need the Lord. It tells us to look more deeply into ourselves. It never leads us to Jesus, our Saviour. What happens when we look more deeply into ourselves? The more deeply we look, the more we find that we need Jesus. That's when we begin to see that we need more than "a shallow and misleading philosophy." "Be careful not to let anyone rob you of this faith" - What faith? Is it faith in ourselves? Is it something that gives our self-confidence a boost? No! It's faith in Jesus, our Saviour. It's believing that He can do for us what we can't do for ourselves. It's believing that salvation isn't something we can obtain for ourselves. It's believing that, when we come to an end of ourselves, we make a new beginning with Jesus, our Saviour.