A recent Facebook post by a brother in Christ gave some great advice—giving advice to yourself. In the Psalms we find David doing just this kind of activity.
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
Seeing the "meme" about giving ourselves advice instantly brought up in me the notion of challenging myself by asking questions. To date, I have specifically performed this action with theology—challenging what I believe and the scriptural basis for it. Yet, as I pondered this, the Spirit of God rang out in me through the "meme" to look deeper still.
Theology is great, but ...
I like what Dr. Mike has to say about how inspiration works. He likes to point out that the writers of scripture were prepared by God as people with worldviews, experiences, and so on, which ultimately led to them being prepared to handle the mission of writing down His Word according to His will and purpose. The scripture is not just a work of God, but a work of God through human beings He has chosen. How does this relate to advising ourselves?
Beyond theology is me as a person. It was Paul who wrote that he could have great theology, knowledge, revelations, and that without love, he was nothing. In this way, he pointed at himself as a person before Christ, his Lord and Savior, Master, and Friend of friends. In that 1 Corinthians 13 "love chapter" is a man deeply concerned with his own flesh and motives that would sully himself before the Lord. Pondering this causes me to become even more deeply aware of the purpose of writing all of this: Who am I before the Lord? What kind of person am I?
Asking very personal questions ...
My resulting comment started of with just me confronting myself with questions. Like all questions, the goal was to ask them with the purpose of exploding the concrete of my selfish ambitions, pride, arrogance, and so on. Here is a smattering of what I posed to ask myself: Am I ... ?
- Am I being combative?
- Am I being critical? loving? caring? gentle?
- Am I being unloving? Egotistical? Argumentative?
- ... you're probably getting the idea, right?
It was then that what Neil Cole wrote in his book "The Organic Church" came rushing in from the sidelines. In one part of his book, Neil points out Jesus as the MVP and he asks the question: Is Jesus on your team? Is He front-and-center? Is Jesus the ball-carrier in the your game? His game? Is your expectation for Jesus to be the one to do what needs to be done? And the thought then came—Larry, as you are asking yourself questions, are you including the Holy Spirit of Christ—Jesus in you? Are you allowing Him to answer the questions? Larry—you will never get the best answer from yourself. It will always come from Him!
Well—as you can possibly imagine—that tore me up. These questions exposed me inwardly to Jesus, my Savior and Friend, Lord and Master of all. But it what the Lord pushed into me from there that took me a step that was deeper still.
A little Proverbs helps a lot!
Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire;
he breaks out against all sound judgment.
Asking ourselves questions inwardly is an arena where we can continue to be dishonest with ourselves. Like many human beings, I know this intuitively. I have watched my own inward dishonesty in action. It's never a good thing. It never ends with the righteousness of Christ being birthed in me. It never ends with sin and selfishness being overcome.
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
but only in expressing his opinion.
When wickedness comes, contempt comes also,
and with dishonor comes disgrace.
It is other people around us, who know us, and who we allow in with complete transparency of ourselves where the Spirit of Christ in them can speak freely to us with confirmation of the Spirit of Christ in us. It's a part of this unity thing that scripture teaches us—the Spirit of God teaches us and calls us into.
Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.
Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers, they succeed.
For by wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory.
This is hard. It requires a great deal of strength and trust. We fear people and being exposed in our weaknesses. We fear rejection and disappointment. Some of that comes from how we were raised. Some of it comes because of lying devils that flood our minds with thoughts that drive, incite, and trigger fear. At the end of it comes another question: What is our view of Jesus? What about those around us? Do we think Jesus is in them? Do they do the same? Do they have "let-your-hair-down" counselors?
As for myself—I can honestly say, I am getting better at this. Still—I also see that I have a way to go ahead and more trust and learning to gain. The road is now clearer than it was. What I hope for at the end of writing this is: Something in this will help us both and the Lord will speak and lovingly guide each of us into Himself a little deeper because of it.