I am suffering from self disease.
There is only one cure.
"Some are in self-they are determined by self-interest primarily-it is the driving force of their lives. To get and to get on for self is the compelling motive.
Some are in the herd. Before they act, they look around-they don't act: they only react to what the herd does. The roots of their motives are in, "What will people think?" Making self, or the herd, our god, is sin, the chief sin.
To be 'in Christ' means to pull up the roots of one's very life from the soil of sin and self and the herd and plant them in Christ. he becomes the source of our life, the source of our thinking, our feeling, our acting, our being.
This obviously involves self surrender. Not merely the surrender of our sins, our bad habits, our wrong thinking and our wrong motives, but the very self behind all of these. All of these are symptoms: the unsurrendered self is the DISEASE.
So the phrase, in Christ, is not only the ultimate concept, but it demands the ultimate act,
SELF SURRENDER.
We don't own our money, our property, not even the house we live in, for we will leave it all behind. The only thing we will take with us is just
OURSELVES.
It is the only thing we own-
the self-
is deliberately handed back to the Giver in an act of supreme self surrender with words something like these:
"I can't handle this self of mine. Take me as I am, and make me as I ought to be. I give myself and my sins and my problems to Thee: but myself first and foremost."
We lose ourselves, and to our astonishment, find ourselves.
We live when we live
IN HIM."
E. Stanley Jones
Missionary to India in the first half of the century
We have been educating,
celebrating
(Sophie turned 4!!)
and
rejoicing
this week.
Have a great Thursday.
