A few days ago, I was motivated to call a Christian leader to encourage him in a difficult ministry that he had. As I thought through what I was going to say, I realized that in addition to trying to encourage him, I wanted him to welcome my counsel, something I didn’t think God wanted me to give. So, I eventually decided, I would write a letter telling him of my prayer support, which would give me less of an opportunity to use him to meet my needs.
This is an example of how subtle and deceptive we really are deep inside. We may do good things for bad reasons. As I began to probe my heart in seminary to find out why I did what I did, I was often shocked at what God revealed. Little did I realize how I had used people to determine what I thought of myself. Also, how I sought the approval of others to feel loved, bypassing the true way to a good self-image and being loved by accepting what God thought of me.
Why Get to Know Our Self Better
So, why get to know our self better? Isn’t that self-centered and egotistical? Wouldn’t it be a better use of our time to get to know God better through increasing our Bible knowledge?
The answer is “No.”
Certainly, knowing more Bible enables us to know more about God and can lead to knowing God better. But so can knowing our self lead to experiencing God in deeper ways.
If we don’t know our self very well, we can do right things for wrong reasons and cling to idols that hinder our growth in experiencing God’s grace and power.
We are great deceivers and the one we fool the most is our self.
Isaiah described the human heart as feeding “on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself or say, ‘Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?’” (Isaiah 44:20). The human heart in Isaiah’s day couldn’t discern how foolish and futile worshipping a block of wood was to success in life!
We often focus on outward behavior in trying to live like Jesus. We often ignore what is going on deep inside of us. And yet, our motives are what God focuses on.
‘“Are you so dull?’ Jesus asked his disciples. ‘Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body (No harm, no foul). But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man sinful. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man sinful; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him sinful” (Matthew 15:16-18, paraphrased).
Getting to know what is going on deep inside of us and what motivates us is critical to cooperating with God in being freed from our bondage to sin.
And one of the biggest sin bondages is our reliance on the collection of idols we use instead of relying on God’s promises for worth, love, and acceptance. Did you know that your reliance on that position of respect to feel important could be an idol?
How to Get to Know Our Self Better
So, how do we get to know our self better?
One thing we do is to look to God to reveal to us who we are and what we rely on. We too easily fool our self and can’t be depended upon to know our self. “The heart is deceitful above all else and is beyond cure, who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
But God can.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). I pray this often to know myself and to be transformed into the person God had in mind when he willed me to exist.
But you may say. “But God may reject me if he knew how sinful I am deep within. I don’t know if I should air my dirty laundry to him.”
But God says, ‘”I already know what is going on deep within you “and never will I leave you; never will I forsake you (Hebrews 13:5), I will love you no matter what you are deep within (Jeremiah 31:3, paraphrased), and you will always be precious to Me, no matter what’” (Isaiah 43:4, paraphrased).
So let’s get to know our self better so that we can cooperate with God in becoming free of our bondages and increasingly live the wonderful life that God has planned for us!
Journey into Lightl 