What Am I Going To Do With Myself?

By John Stallings


…Presumptuous are they, and self-willed……2 Peter 2:10

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross & follow me. –Luke 9:23

I always enjoyed watching Mohammad Ali fight.

Of course his original name was Cassius Clay. We first got acquainted with him years ago as a nineteen year old boxer. He was young, brash and above all, a very good fighter. The man we knew in latter years, although world renowned, was hardly a shadow of the young fighter we knew so many decades ago. I was reading an article recently where Ali talked about his past and he said something that caught my attention. He said many of the fighters he beat really beat themselves by the mistakes they made. In other words, he was saying even with boxers, self is sometimes the most formidable opponent.

Often when talking about a political election we’ll say of the leading candidate, “The election is his to lose.” In other words, unless he does something clumsy and shots himself in the foot, he’ll win. Let’s talk about the question of dealing with our biggest obstacle, ourselves.

We Know What We’re Going To Do About Most Everything In Our Lives.

. Our spouses,
· Parents,
· Children,
· And other relatives.
· We have long since learned to relate to the people we work with or go to school with.
· We have a working relationship with our neighbors and don’t lose sleep over other people in our lives.
· We pretty much have a plan and an approach for each and every one of them.
· We know what we’re going to do about our bills, our taxes, unforeseen sickness, setbacks and just about every other thing that could be named.

However, many who have mastered all those relationships and challenges that life presents often don’t have the slightest idea what to do with themselves. That may sound strange, but think about it. Who do you have the most trouble with? We all have more trouble with ourselves than any one else. Paul says, speaking to Titus about the qualifications of a Bishop, “a Bishop must not be self-willed”. Titus 1:7. He didn’t say he must not be devil -willed, but self-willed.

This goes for us as well. If the devil died tomorrow we’d still have our biggest challenges with self. Nowhere does the Bible tell us to take every devil into captivity but it does say—bringing every thought into captivity…2 Cor. 10:5

WE TREAT OURSELVES IN WAYS WE WOULDN'T ALLOW ANYONE ELSE TO TREAT US.

Think about it. We wouldn’t allow another person to come to us and say, “You won’t be allowed to finish your education. You will not be allowed to finish high school or attend college. Its been decided for you and that’s final.”

You wouldn’t allow that would you? You or I would hit the ceiling and if necessary, hire attorneys and go all the way to the Supreme Court to make sure that didn’t stand. However, we’ll turn right around and do that exact thing to ourselves. With parents pleading with us to finish school, we’ll just quit, of our own free will, and not think a thing about it until it’s too late to do anything but regret it.

We’ll make the decision to stop our schooling, often for no other reason than we didn’t feel like continuing. I don’t say this to condemn or to suggest that everyone should go to college, but to make the point that we make decisions that hurt ourselves when no one else would dare do that to us.

We wouldn’t allow another person to say to us, “from now on you’re going to only eat junk food.” Your diet will be sugars, starches, processed foods with no food value. No more nutritious foods for you. You’ve got to gain 60 lbs., become grossly overweight and remain that way.” You may laugh and say, “I wouldn’t stand for that, I would never allow someone to do that to me.” Yet often people do it to themselves and think nothing of it.

You wouldn’t let a person take you out to a house on the edge of town where a mean man or women lived and tell you to stay there and be beaten and verbally abused on a daily basis. No one could make you get your eyes blackened and your body bruised and cut up by another person. It would take an insane person to even think of that. But people will, of their own free-will marry spouses who will abuse them and stay right there and allow it to happen.

No one would allow another person to take them out and get them so drunk and drugged up that they didn’t know who they were and what they were doing. You wouldn’t let another person to put you in debt for every penny you had so you wouldn’t be able to pay your bills, and say to you, “this is how you will stay the rest of your life.” We would be right in not allowing others to oppress us, but how much sense does it make to do the same things to ourselves?

Without Thinking About It We Can Become Our Own Worst Enemies.

Suppose you hired me to help coach you to be the best you could be and to help you go as far as you could possibly go in your life. You were looking to me to help you in every way to reach your full potential. Then one day I came in and announced to you that I had reached the conclusion that you’d gone as far and as high as you could possibly go and you should give up and quit. I further informed you that you were most probably born on the wrong side of the tracks and therefore not to expect life to get any better than it already is.

If this happened, what would you do with me? I believe that if a scenario like that took place you’d immediately fire me and get as far away from me as you possibly could get.

However, in this imaginary scenario, what if that negative person isn’t me, it’s you. To be frank, many people treat themselves in exactly the way I’ve described, constantly putting themselves down to the place that they have no confidence in their own ability to have a superlative life. And the problem is, you can’t fire yourself can you?

So I ask the question: What are you going to do with yourself?

The reason it’s so important that we learn to deal with ourselves successfully is; when our lives work, it sends ripples into countless other lives.

Let me make some suggestions.

First there’s the necessity to place full trust in Christ as Lord and Savior. Then according to Romans 12:1 we must,

1. PRESENT OURSELVES TO GOD AS A LIVING SACRIFICE.

Romans 12: 1 says---I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service.
In 2 Cor.8:5 Paul says that the Christians at Macedonia, before they gave an offering, first gave themselves to the Lord. When they did this first, then they gave liberally to Paul.

· A little boy who went to church and had nothing to put in the offering plate so he asked the usher to lower the offering plate to the floor so he could step in. All he had to give was himself. That’s the very first thing we need to do with ourselves.

Trying to have a full rich life without Jesus in your life would be like trying to draw water out of a dry well. You might say, I know people who are happy and successful and they aren’t Christians. To an extent that may be true but I will say unequivocally, those people are using Godly, Biblical principles without knowing it. How sad that they are taking His teachings only, when if they knew Him as Savior they’d be able to enjoy a life of wholeness that only Christ can provide.

The next thing is:

2. RESPECT YOURSELF.

Please don’t mistake self-respect for a prideful, egotistical, narcissistic mind- set. This kind of pride in self will make you a slave to your accomplishments & the opinions of others. The heart will always be striving to enthrone self & churning to exceed expectations. Fleshly appetites will consume time, money & energy, & joy is sapped out of relationships. This kind of self-glorification leads to a worship of self that is as anti-Christ as anything ever hatched in hell. Self-glorification winks at its own sin & condemns the sins of others.

The kind of self-respect the Bible teaches is respect that stems from who we are in Christ; our Creator who made us in His image. The Psalmist said in Psalms 139:14, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”. The word “fearfully” actually means “respectfully” made. Think about that.

The Bible says in 2 Peter 2:9:”But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood an holy nation a peculiar people, that should show forth the praise of him that hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Not only that; but one third of all God is died for us on the cross. Think of someone offering their child for you to allow you to escape a punishment you deserved.

Can You Imagine Anyone You Know Actually Giving Their Child To Save Your Life?
That’s exactly what God did when he gave Christ to die for us. So in light of that, how can we do less than respect ourselves? If you want to see the devastation that happens when people lose respect for themselves, look at what the teaching of evolution has done to our school children. The message they teach is that we evolved from monkeys so the kids have started to act as if they are no more than educated animals. How sad to have this teaching so pervasive today and look at the havoc it wreaks in the school systems of our land.

I’m not advocating that we assume an attitude of such superiority that we see ourselves as little Gods, but I am advocating that we realized we are God's workmanship, the highest of all beings He created and act accordingly.

The next thing I should do with myself is ;

3. DISCIPLINE MYSELF.

Self discipline is the ability to get yourself to take action regardless of your emotional state. Imagine what could happen if you could get yourself to follow through on your best intentions no matter what. If you need to lose 40 pounds, without self-discipline the intention won’t happen. But with sufficient self-discipline, it’s a done deal. Your life’s success will be measured by the ability you have, and the willingness you have to get yourself to do the things you ought to do in your life. It’s that simple. Don’t make the mistake of waiting for God to do the things for you that you must do for yourself.

In 1 Corinthians 9:27, Paul says; --“But I keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway.”What a statement. Many a person with a good head and heart will never reach their potential because they fail in the area of self discipline. Sometimes self-discipline will mean speaking the truth in love & other times it will mean just shushing. This much I have learned: No one is going to force me to work harder, no one is going to give me success pep talks, no one is going to constantly stay after me to do those things I should be doing to be successful. No one will tell me to shave, to bathe, to get up and work, to vote, to get my taxes and insurance paid, fix my roof, get the oil in my car changed, watch my blood pressure, eat right and brush my teeth. That’s my watch. It’s totally my responsibility. If I don’t do it for myself, it won’t be done- period. To have any kind of a decent life, we’ll have to discipline ourselves.

Here’s a scary thought. If you & I can’t discipline ourselves, we are certain to be disciplined by others.

Don’t believe me? Chew on this. Run your credit cards up real high & be late on a couple of payments. What happens? The companies will be quick to teach you a thing or two about discipline. I repeat, if you don’t discipline yourself, someone else will do it for you.

Next, I’m going to;

4. ENCOURAGE MYSELF.

When I was a teenager, I observed that most adults had trouble distinguishing between two ideas;

1. Promoting pride, &
2. Encouraging progress.

Because they feared the first, they seldom did the latter. They didn’t want us to be cocky so they would give us a lot of correction but precious little encouragement. The Bible has a lot to say about encouragement. Moses regularly encouraged Israel in the wilderness & later Joshua did the same. There‘s a vast difference between flattery & encouragement.

· Flattery is lies told for selfish reasons.
· Encouragement is truth told for unselfish reasons.

We are in good company when we are encouragers because the Holy Spirit is an encourager & a comforter.

However when there is no one encouraging us, we can encourage ourselves. The Bible says that king David encouraged himself in the Lord. To keep your spirits up, it’s necessary to constantly remind yourself of who you are in God and who God is to you. We shouldn’t become dependent on the encouragement of others. It may be there and it may not, but when we learn to build ourselves up we never have to feel defeated. Also we need to guard our thought life carefully.

Some morning, for no apparent reason, you may get out of bed & observe that a “grasshopper spirit” has jumped on you. The thing to do is to quickly identify it & start rebuking it right then & there. It’s so easy to let yourself go negative and start thinking like a grasshopper instead of a giant killer. Resist that spirit & start giving your soul instructions to praise & glorify God & that spirit can’t stay.

In Psalms 103 the Psalmists gives instruction to his soul and tells it to bless the Lord.

Listen----: Bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is within me bless His Holy name. Bless the Lord oh my soul and forget not all his benefits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies , who satisfies thy mouth with good things: so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles.”

5. FORGIVE MYSELF.

Maybe you’re waiting today on someone whose hurt you to apologize. May I make a suggestion? Stop waiting. In all probability it’s not going to happen. In my years of ministry I’ve had people to lie to me, steal from me & tell hurtful lies on me. Guess how many have ever apologized? Right. None that I can remember. Why? Most people don’t have the courage or stomach to apologize even when they know they’ve done wrong.

But something worse than that is; ---often we can’t forgive ourselves for sins or mistakes we’ve made.

I once heard a judge tell a young woman who’d made a mistake & paid for it—“Young lady, don’t give yourself a life sentence.” Society had forgiven & closed the books on her transgression but the question was would she forgive herself? Have you not forgiven yourself for some mistake you made in the past?

Let me ask you a question. If you’re not forgiving yourself, who are you helping? You’re not helping God because He’s forgiven you & expects you to do the same. Can you help others by not forgiving yourself? I think not. Is it making you spiritually stronger to not forgive yourself? I don’t think so. Is it honoring the God who has mercifully extended His love & forgiveness? I don’t think so, do you?

We used to enjoy watching the show Growing Pains. The show was about the Seaver family but most of the plots centered on the antics of Mike Seaver, the mischievous, trouble making teen, played by Kirk Cameron. On an episode of E! True Hollywood story, they documented the events that led to the cancellation of the show. According to cast & crew & producers of the show Kirk Cameron became a born again Christian & he became increasingly difficult to work with.

There was nothing immoral or out of the way on the show but at one point Cameron got a female cast member fired because of something in her past. Cameron demanded that certain shows be rewritten & many writers quit because he labeled what they were writing junk. He wanted them to re-invent him as a humble, placid boy when the show was built on his foibles.

The show finally buckled under the pressure of trying to find someone to replace Cameron.

But this story has a happy ending. In 2000, Cameron rejoined the cast of Growing Pains to shoot a reunion movie. On the set Cameron stood in front of his TV family & apologized, saying “I was a 17 year old guy trying to walk with integrity, knowing that I was walking in the opposite direction of many other people. I didn’t have the kind of maturity & grace in saying things that I would now.” He said he’d forgiven himself & asked for their forgiveness.

The cast accepted his heartfelt apology & once again embraced him. Cast member Jeremy Miller who played the younger brother Ben Seaver said—“he’s once again the Kirk I remember.”

In a March 2003 article in Christianity Today, Cameron admitted that he went through growing pains on the set of the sitcom. He was struggling with balancing the power to demand what he wanted & how to express his new-found faith in God. Cameron admitted –that “ he made some mistakes common to new believers such as distancing himself so far from the world that they do no good for anyone.”

Spiritual growth isn’t easy & we all make mistakes in our journey. Over time if we will stay connected, & don’t quit & “Drop off the key,” or “Hop on the bus,” God will mold & shape us into what He wants us to be.

If you are currently embracing a season of change in your life, just hang in there. There will be mistakes, fear, and adversity but there will be growth. More & more we’ll be able to keep self “crucified with Christ” & as Paul said, “Die daily.”

I'm reminded of an old song we used to sing;

HAVE THINE OWN WAY LORD, HAVE THINE OWN WAY,
THOU ART THE POTTER, I AM THE CLAY,
MOLD ME AND MAKE ME, AFTER THY WILL,
WHILE I AM WAITING, YIELDED AND STILL.

Blessings,

John