Jesus didn’t and doesn’t play to the crowd; He’s always seeking the person as opposed to the people. We on the other hand are repeatedly sacrificing individuals in the name of what’s best for all. The greater good is usually a smokescreen for having it my way which doesn’t seem like Jesus at all.
Another thing God is certainly always saying is, trust me. He always has your best in mind. Following Him will never result in anything less than ultimate good. Peace is the prize. Sure there will be challenges in this life, the people around you will make decisions that hurt, you will make choices that are not good for you or others but He is not only capable of redeeming them, it is what He wants to do if we’ll let Him. This isn’t to be thought of as always getting what we want. It’s the promise He gives that we’ll forever get what we need.
The best place to start when seeking less self is trust. A close examination of the things in our life that cause the most difficulty will usually reveal an area that we don’t really trust God in and when we don’t trust Him we feel it necessary to meet that need ourselves. For example, if we don’t trust that God’s love for us is enough we resort to all kinds of ways to either attain love from others, manipulate those around us or convince ourselves and others that we don’t need love.
As followers of God, sin no longer separates us from Him but clouds us from Him for the moment. We get to choose how long the moment is. We need to turn back to Him immediately not take our punishment into our own hands and prolong the cloudiness. This only causes us to feel more unloved which leads to more clouds.
“For this the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” There is no sin that we have to commit. With Jesus there is always a way out, it’s our choice. Are we going to choose self, what we think we want or need or are we going to choose God? The choice is usually much clearer than we like to believe.
It seems to me that there is only one sin: pride or putting ourselves before God and others. The endless lists of “sins” are all rooted in pride. Our struggle both here and in the spiritual realm is against self. Satan’s sin was the same as ours and he likes nothing better than to encourage us to be like him instead of being like Christ.
