Pressing On: DEATH TO SELF -- What the World Needs Now!

Sunday, February 9, 2020

DEATH TO SELF -- What the World Needs Now!

Accept yourself,

Love yourself,

You are enough,

Selfies,

BLECH!

Seriously. How about:

Take your eyes off yourself.

That's about as much "self" as we we need. Just enough "self" to realize that our "self" is not the answer.

The Amway business was the first place to teach me that. It's very difficult to build a people business if you are consumed with yourself. People just won't like you, and people who don't like you, don't usually want to be in a business with you. Those with the biggest Amway businesses are generally those who are focussed on helping others get what they want to achieve in their businesses. What an incredibly novel idea! I remember repeating this to myself ad nauseam as I went about my life in those years; take your eyes off yourself, take your eyes off yourself, take your eyes off yourself . . .

And then I became a Christian and realized that further to that, the Bible has nothing good to say about "self". It is the source of all wickedness, depravity, and sorrow.

"For the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked"
Jeremiah 17:9

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
Matthew 7:12

In fact the Bible demands death to the self!

"And he was saying to them all, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself'"
Luke 9:23

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me" Galatians 2:20

This is exactly the opposite message I hear being preached from the pulpits of social media. Go ahead, Google "self love."

How. Sad. For this generation.

After 50 years of living, I see only how my focus on SELF has kept me in bondage.

Taking my eyes off my self helped me overcome an eating disorder -- what do you know, the more I thought of others and the less I thought of myself, the less concerned I was about extra inches here or there. I promise, if your focus is on helping, those helped won't care.

Taking my eyes off my self continues to help me overcome my social anxiety -- what do you know, the more I focus on how I can serve others in a given situation, the less I focus on what others will be thinking of me. I found that almost everyone loves someone who is serving them.

Taking my eyes off myself consistently helps me stave off depression and worry -- what do you know, the more I focus on what will make others happy, the more I forget that I am unhappy.

DEATH TO SELF

Would you buy the t-shirt?

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My Testimony

Well not really "my" testimony. It is a testimony to the saving power and grace of Jesus Christ, so it's His testimony.

SHORT VERSION:

Growing up in the Catholic Church, I became a born-again believer in 1993, at the age of 24.

MUCH LONGER VERSION:

Searching for Truth has been a part of my makeup since before my dad passed away 40+ years ago. I was almost eight, then, and not a day has gone by since that I haven't been on the hunt for what is True, worthy of pursuing, and worthy of living and dying for. I guess I've always been "deep" that way :)

I was attending the Catholic Church back when I was eight, and I sold out. Completely. If God was God, and He was as important as they were telling me, then I was going to learn every prayer, make the most ardent confessions, take communion with the purest soul, and be a nun. I even had a catechism teacher convinced I would be a saint one day.

When I look back I see what a strange creature I must have been! But I was absolutely sincere, and it boggled my mind as to why not everyone (grownups included) would not serve our Lord and His Church first and foremost--if that's what they claimed to believe. (Actually it still boggles.) So devout was I, that I won the award for being top of my seventh grade catechism class--a Bible.

The problems began when I started reading that Bible. And then I went to college. I was just finishing up the Old Testament and, being no less interested in the Truth, I pursued college courses in Philosophy, Anthropology, and Psychology (as well as Statistics and Algebra, but we won't go there). Things were not at all as I had expected.

I was shocked and disturbed to hear in my new classes that there were people, thinking people, who seemed to desire Truth as much as I, who did not hold a Catholic, Biblical, or even remotely Christian worldview. How could this be? Anybody who was sincerely after Truth would certainly discover that The Church held it. Wouldn't they?

Then I became even more shocked and disturbed. As I finished reading through the book of Revelation, (the last book of the Bible) I had to recognize that I had found no evidence for, and from what I could see, actually some direct contradiction to, most of the practices of the Catholic Church to which I'd been so devoted.

None of the these are found in the Bible:

Devotion to Mary.

Any mediator other than Jesus between man and God--including a priest.

Penance for reparation of sin.

Repeating prayers over and over (eg. the Rosary).

Calling another man "Father", as in spiritual father.

Confessing sins to another in hopes of absolution.

Any man being head of the Church.

and many more . . .

What?!?!??? I thought I must have missed it, I re-read. My mind became suspect. Hmmm. No wonder there was no emphasis in 15 years of church-going on having or reading a personal copy of the Bible.

It wasn't just the Church about which I became suspect; everything fell under my scrutiny. NO WAY was I going to believe grass was green just because it looked that way, and certainly not just because somebody told me it was. (In fact it's not green is it? It just reflects green, it's actually soaking in every other colour but green.) I entered a five-year period of chaos.

God was extremely merciful to me during this time. I did things which could have killed me, and things that could have affected me with besetting sin, or consequences that would have altered my life. I investigated other religions, I lived without God for a while (as much as one can) which was initially very liberating, but eventually confined me to what felt like insane circular thinking. God has used that time to continually convict me that the grass is not greener without Him, even if it looks that way. It's a mess of jumbled, muddy colours that cannot make sense or beauty.

Graciously, through odd and timely circumstances, God led me to a handful of select, sincere people from different walks of life who were all avidly seeking to walk the words of the Bible. After these years of seeking, and dead ends, and mistrust, and study, I had come to a reasonably firm conclusion that a) there was a powerful Creator responsible for the world (not profound, even Dawkins agrees with that! lol) and b) sheer evidence probably supported the God of the Jews if the idea of a "God" (versus merely some sort of "force") were to be entertained. I had done a lot of my homework but leery of committing to anything.

It took a long time -- over five years -- but on my 24th birthday in 1993, I took a terrifying leap-of-faith and turned it all over to the God of the Bible and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. For over 25 years I have actively put this Truth to the test and It has not failed me. I have failed It, but It, He, my Creator, stands steadfast, fulfilling His promises day-by-day to make me a new creature, a testimony, to His grace and power.