November 01, 2021: "Self" Is the Greatest Curse, In Relationship to God, Our Family and Our Friends.

There is so much wrong in our world today. Everywhere we turn to, we see so much anger, fighting in the streets, and sometimes killings. Our current generation compared to our generations of the past, has become a generation so full of "self and hate".

Our "self-will" has over-taken today's society even in our Christian circles. My daughter who worked at serving people at a restaurant came home and told me of a woman she knows that goes to our church that was very rude and self-demanding with her order. She did not recognize my daughter, but that should not have mattered.

We as Christians, should always be aware that we are being watched by others, but especially by our God. How we act and behave, especially as Christians, gives our God a bad name and reputation. We as Christians must portray the "Light of Jesus" in our lives. As stated by Andrew Murray in his book, "Absolute Surrender", "Christ came to redeem us from self".

He further states in his book: "We sometimes talk about deliverance from the "self-life"- and thank God for every word that can be said about it to help us - but I am afraid some people think deliverance from the self-life means that now they are going to have no longer any trouble in serving God; and they forget that deliverance from self-life means to be a vessel overflowing with love to everybody all the day.

In the Book of Jeremiah, the Lord speaks about the people of Israel and how they are so deceitful with themselves and with others. We too can deceive ourselves with our selfish desires.

Jeremiah 17: 9-10

“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? 10 I, the Lord, search the heart, test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.

How can we begin to serve our God in an "unselfish way"? We cannot! It is impossible to do so by our "own self-will" still sitting on the throne of our hearts. We must be willing to be "totally and absolutely surrendered" to the Holy Spirit working in our lives.

PERSONNAL COMMENT:

I am sad to say, we all fail in this area of our lives, including myself. We find ourselves getting upset with situations that we cannot control and we, "our self-life" quickly steps in to demand our rights in the way we want to be treated. We have failed to learn to believe and accept the truth that the Holy Spirit can pour God's love into our hearts. And the only way this can be done, is by emptying our "self-life", and come to absolute surrender of self, so that God's love can fill us. May we come to ask God to rid ourselves of our "self-will" so that we can learn to serve Him, our families, and others around us.