Every morning before reading the Bible I spend time singing. My voice is not great but the lyrics are prayers as well as worship. One song today is fairly new to me: “Oh give me rest from Self” with verses like: “This cruel self, oh, how it strives and works within my breast, to come between Thee and my soul, and keep me back from rest.”
Today’s devotional reading says the same thing! It describes how most people think they are the greatest or the most important people in the universe with lives made up of endless variations on the word “me.” I know that problem. While the Bible is clear that my old self died with Christ and is separated from God, the desire to be the center of everything, or fulfill my dreams, or share my views and wisdom, or get others to follow my ideas, blah, blah, blah. I enjoy people but am content to be alone, which does not help this battle with self. What I know is mostly related to myself.
The reading quotes Solomon’s battle with self-made happiness. He said in his heart:
“Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:1–11)In these verses, the word “I” is repeated more than a dozen times, yet at the end of his efforts, he realized that self rule did not profit him nor did it help anyone else. It was a waste of time and energy, a waste of his life.
Jesus was not that way. He could pray, “Not my will but thine be done” because self was not the center of His universe — the souls of sinners were more important, and the will of His Father was at the top of the list. He spent all of His waking hours doing what God wanted Him to do — be with needy people, teaching them and being gracious unto them. His life was spent to redeem unworthy sinners such as me.
This makes Jesus the most important person in the universe. Without His grace, I would not even be alive and breathing, never mind forgiven and on my way to endless life with Him. He loves, heals, perseveres, is ever-present, all wise, full of grace and truth. To be like Him is to put the will of God front and center, knowing that my old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that I would no longer be enslaved to sin. (Romans 6)
PRAY: Keep my focus on You, Lord. It is too easy to consider my ideas and plans, even get annoyed if You bring interruptions to what I’m doing. How vain. Forgive my lapses into self-rule and enable continual trust in You, with all my heart and soul by Your grace, for You are the center of everything.
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