Self

As people self-realize, they build.

1. As they think to discover themselves, they actually erect the self, and call it a discovery
2. As we think to uncover ourselves we actually build a big cover system.
3. We cover our self from God. We also insulate ourselves from truth/reality.

The process brings a person face to face with some ugly things.

1. Many think that everything perceived in us is accurately ours and part of our identity.
2. They don’t reckon on these findings as optional, because modern psychology has taught it —what you observe in you, is you.
3. There is no “devil” in this thinking.
4. There is no right or wrong.
5. There is only you. Hey, what you find, must be realized, to make you be a “real” person.

This may be sincere, unconscious observation;  but tough to swallow for some watching from outside..

One, the religious-moral folk really don’t want to see the immoral display of the SR’s (self-realizers), even if it is done in the name of “self discovery.”

Two, the spiritual man with more understanding discerns what has been said –frankly, the SR’s are deceived!

Thirdly, as the progression of self-realization digs up uglier and uglier dregs, even the mildly immoral withdraw from them .

See, believers know a man has a Sin nature and in trying to discover it, they build it a dual personality.

Split; one side a social butterfly —the other a lust driven explorer of the darkest and vile. A person who has met the Savior admits all this already about himself, and avails himself to cleansing.

He ignores them with spiritual discernment.

“O the things that go through my mind!” says the regenerated man. He ignores them with spiritual discernment. The unregenerate too tries to ignore some at first, but fails.

He buys some psychology books to help. He finds his moral upbringing is restricting his impulsive inward feelings, longings, and desires but is powerless to remove them. He is losing to them. Psychology tells him “it is just your true self coming out.”

No kidding?! O don’t say that! Please put it back in! says the discerning. If he had gone to the Bible, our friend would have found no coddling of his sick desires but a stern revulsion. He also would have found, a loving God and a loving solution.

Friends, our world has built a whole system of evolutionary, godless, ideal-fabricated explanations of the universe, because some determined folks wanted to follow their lusts into an illicit lifestyle. They resist feelings of “something’s wrong with all this.” And pop-psychology has told them to go for it as a matter of natural course.

The bigger problem is with what sin-commitment brings —death.

A hatred of morality, spirituality, and God Himself often develops and fuels the push forward. Folks sin out of spite sometimes, only because they really have never encountered a living, loving, Savior. We understand this. The bigger problem is with what sin-commitment brings —death, and this is the point.

Folks, people are fighting for, lobbying for, hating others for, and lying for something that cancer has nothing over. It is the destructive, deceitful, good feeling, fun evoking —  force of self indulgence, self gratification, self absorption, and self love. It will destroy you, as sure as the Bible describes it.

None are completely free from it. None. We have all tasted it, smelled it, heard it, and been overcome by it. Please, please don’t encourage it, and please pray for our fellow humans caught in it.

Finally, “but God.” In Isaiah it is said that He found no intercessor. So His own arm brought salvation. None could help, none even cared and truth had fallen in the street. Equity could not enter and judgement stood afar off.

Salvation is the sovereign intervention of an outsider, an unknown.

Friends, salvation is not turning over a new leaf. Salvation is the sovereign intervention of an outsider, an unknown, upon a world of individuals who became without any kind of hope at all because of sin. This is what sin does. Hope enters purely the free operation of a willing and able God of Mercy, thank you, thank you Lord.