Don't think too highly of yourself

When God commands us to love him with all of our heart, soul, and mind He is basically telling us that He should be number one in our lives (Mark 12:30). Yet too often we push God to the side and make Him number two or three in our lives. We get to the place where we unknowingly tell God we do not need Him. When we rebel against God (SIN) we are saying that he is not good enough to fulfill us. We put our hearts and minds on other things than God. We end up not allowing God to abide in us. When we bring worldly things such as materialistic and sexual sins/objects we push God out of the way. There ends up being no room left for Him in our hearts. That is why it is import to focus our minds on God daily. We should not be seeking friends, video games, facebook (etc.), sports, school, romantic relationships to fulfill us. We cannot expect those things to bring an everlasting joy that God brings (Ps 70:4). When our focus is shifted from God we will fall, just as Peter did when he stepped out of the boat. He was focused on Jesus at first, but then he started to look around he was afraid and began to sink. One import thing to note here is that even though we do fall. Jesus is always there to pick us back up (Matthew 14:22-32)




When Christ is #1 in our lives, it should not matter what we go through (James 1:2-120. We should be able to look to him for his wisdom to guide us. We should consider it joy that God is making us stronger through our trails. Jesus dying on the cross should be enough joy to last us the rest of our lives. Somewhere along the way though we feel that God has to continue to give to us for some reason, we feel that we need to be made much of to be loved. Our culture has taught us that to be loved is to made much of, but this is not the cause. God has a higher purpose in our struggles. He did not come so that we may live comfortable lives playing our xbox 360 indoors with the A/C. He died for our sins, so that we may become righteous through him. Through Jesus we do not receive the judgment that is rightfully due us. Our sole purpose in life is to make the His name known, that is if you are a child of God. We have become such selfish people of God. Our culture tells us that we should seek our desires and do whatever it takes to please ourselves. That is not what God calls us to do. He calls us to die to ourselves, to put away our selfish desires, to seek his will daily through praying and reading our bibles.



We are not supposed to look like the world. People should be able to point us out in a crowd. If God calls us to die, than we will gladly die for His names. If God calls us to suffer, than we will gladly suffer for his name. Whatever God calls us to we should go. We never said it would be easy, or that we would never be uncomfortable. We may get angry and upset, but our hearts are deceitfully wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). We can never know Gods plan for our lives if we are not seeking Him daily (maybe even hourly) through prayer and reading His word. This comes through disciplining ourselves (1 Corinthians 9:24-27). We must focus on God and His will, and put Him first in our lives by putting our selfish desires to death. We must make war against the enemy (Satan and his fallen angles), the battle we fight is life and death. (Ephesians 6:10-20). We have to understand the rules of engagement if we are ever going to win. Therefore, we must not think to highly or ourselves, but put Christ first in everything. God should be our greatest pride and joy of this life.

"Most modern people can scarcely imagine an alternative understanding of feeling loved other than feeling made much of. If you don’t make much of me you are not loving me. But when you apply this definition of love to God, it weakens his worth, undermines his goodness, and steals our final satisfaction. If the enjoyment of God himself is not the final and best gift of love, then God is not the greatest treasure, his self-giving is not the highest mercy, the gospel is not the good news that sinners may enjoy their Maker, Christ did not suffer to bring us to God, and our souls must look beyond him for satisfaction. This distortion of divine love into an endorsement of self-admirationis subtle. It creeps into our most religious acts. We claim to be praising God because of his love for us. But if his love for us is at bottom his making much of us, who is really being praised? We are willing to be God-centered, it seems, as long as God is man-centered. We are willing to boast in the cross as long as the cross is a witness to our worth. Who then is our pride and joy?"




-John Piper