Self Help is No Help

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps? No.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone is desiring to come after me, let him forget self and lose sight of his own interests, and let him pick up his cross and carry it, and let him be taking the same road with me that I travel, for whoever is desiring to save his soul-life shall ruin it, but whoever will pass a sentence of death upon his soul-life for my sake, shall find it.  Mathew 16:24 Kenneth Wuest’s NT

Andrew Murray’s chapter on the self-life in his book, The Master’s Indwelling, has me meditating on this verse.  I don’t know about your “self”, but my “self” runs rampant.  Murray sees “self” as the root of all of our issues that we have trouble dealing with.  His solution?  “A new life from above, the life of Christ, must take the place of the self-life; then alone can we be conquerors.”  We’ll take more of a look at self and solution on Friday.

Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.  ~ The Message