Preaching the Gospel to Yourself
Posted on November 2, 2015 by America's Keswick in Freedom Fighters
Preaching the Gospel to Yourself
Good morning, brothers. I trust you are ready for this new month, this new week of Freedom Fighters and what God wants to do in your life.
Today I am sharing a blog from one of my friends, Dave McCarty, Director of Gospel Friendships. Dave has a way of getting right down to the issues of the heart and I have learned so much from his walk with the Lord over the years. I trust his contribution today will speak to your heart – it is an “oucher!”
I stopped preaching the Gospel to myself,
because I’ve done it for so many years, that I no longer struggle to believe Jesus loves me, just as I am. It was so helpful in building a wide, deep, foundation of grace in my life, to keep me from being so introspection-avoidant – fearful of looking inside to see my motives for all I do all day long. And in recent years Jesus’ Spirit has been opening my eyes to see a monstrous critical-judgmental spirit, competitiveness, addiction to superiority, that I could never have imagined. Humiliating to have been THAT blind. PhariseeDave. ShepherdDave.
So yesterday, instead of preaching the Gospel to myself, I preached reality to myself. Huh? Example. Whenever I caught myself noticing the flaws of others – analyzing them, being critical of them, so as to feel more worthy than them, or, whenever I caught myself doing something that made me feel good about myself, I invented a little song yesterday that I sang to myself, while alone in my car, to the tune of “Oh how I love Jesus.” It goes like this:
Oh, how I love worthy,
Oh, how I love worthy,
Oh, how I love worthy,
It feels so good to me.
Then as I was convicted of how much I love having my own worthiness, and how unsatisfied I am with Jesus and His imputed worthiness, I started singing next, to the same tune:
Oh, how I love clueless,
Oh, how I love clueless,
Oh, how I love clueless,
It feel so better to me.
I have two main addictions: 1) feeling worthiness of my own, and 2) feeling clueless/childlike/Jesus-dependent. I have a bottomless pit of need for worthiness, so when I feel a little bit worthy, I want some MORE. And then MORE. Like any addict. Likewise, when I feel clueless/childlike/Jesus-dependent it feels so much better than my own worthiness, that I want some MORE. I can’t get enough cluelessness/childlikeness/Jesus-dependency. Both are addictions, but one leads to misery and the other leads to happiness. One is “mo bettah,” as they say in L.A. That’s Lower Alabama, according to Johnny Long. Dave McCarty is the Director of Gospel Friendships
Daily Bible Reading: 2 Samuel 21-23; 3 John
Think About This: “You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.” Dallas Willard
This Week’s Verse to Memorize: The Lord is good to those who wait [confidently] for Him, to those who seek Him [on the authority of God’s word]. Lamentations 3:20 (Amplified Bible)