“Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” Job 38:1-2
“How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?” Psalm 13:2
“O my God, my soul is cast down within me:” Psalm 42:6 “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?” Psalm 42:6
“lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death — hope thou in God.”
There are four characteristics of a person who hides in their self counsel.
- First, they live in self-preservation.
- Secondly, a person who is hiding in Adam lives in self-defense mechanisms.
- The third characteristic is self-absorption.
- Fourth, self-occupation
According to Dr. Carl H. Stevens, founder of Greater Grace Church in Baltimore Md. these 4 characteristics progress in the self-counseled soul.
The self-absorbed become distracted and blinded to God’s viewpoint and they can’t hear the counsel that would set them free.
“The self-occupied reveal a subjective disposition where a person measures self and how they are doing by their own understanding.”
Tom Hanks found himself on an island as a castaway and stayed trapped there for four years. so the movie goes. During the time he discovered that he lost all power to do anything, including take his own life. This threw him into a mode of just staying alive. It reduced him and opened his heart to the discovery of a higher law, of providence and that of God. Well, fate is not what we believe in, but reduced, a believer finds God and His plan for life and this is a sovereign one. It’s discovery is vital or truth gets skewed.
Self-counsel likewise skews God’s counsel and in the time of my internal mind-battle, self-preservation, with my defense mechanisms operate automatically. My soul jumps to a cover-up program immediately suppressing and repressing and denying. Psychological ploys may activate now such as crying out, “serenity now.” ha ha. Psychology may divert a person toward another inward strategy. All of it leads toward absorption and self-occupation, and God is quieted.
My soul is at enmity with God, I must not be fooled by the “good” it seems to be doing, but take sides against myself and opt for God’s counsel in His Word.
listverse.com tells of 7 defense mechanisms. (definitions mine).
- Rationalization– excuse formation
- Identification– mentally hooking up with cool people for my own self-esteem
- Displacement– taking my anger out on another
- Projection– sticking my stuff on another
- Regression– shrinking back to baby days
- Reaction Formation– behaving contrary to ones feelings
- Repression– burying my junk in the unconscious.
So, God’s plan and counsel, based on Christ’s death and blood shedding, seeks to eliminate excuses, blaming, sticking my emotions, transferring guilt, pulling out a brainy quote, burying pain, acting the child, clamming up, and any others that we can invent. It does not kill me, just my old ego.
Ego is:
- “the self, especially as contrasted with another self or the world.”
- “… the organized conscious mediator between the person and reality.”
- ” functions both in the perception of and adaptation to reality.” Merriam-Webster
Finally, Revelation 3:18 says, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou may be rich; and white raiment, that thou may be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou may see.”
So, God wishes to give through plan and counsel a new means to perceive and adapt to His reality:
- Gold, — “God’s immutable self-disclosure which has taken all and everybody into His foreknown plan of grace.”
- White raiment– God’s replacement covering of imputed righteousness.
- Eyesalve — Lighted eyes with the ego, it’s defenses, and all self-importance blown to smithereens, and then the bliss of resting in His Love illuminated brighter than the sun on a clear day.
Thanks Tom Hanks, your powerlessness opened your new world. Our powerlessness purchases for us God Himself. Love ya
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