Wandering through this Christmas season, bouncing off seasonal glitter and rainy weather, trying my darnedest to get at something other than the sappy sentimentality of the season, has made realize one thing, at least: that so often, the biggest foe I have to fight is myself. Even the things we think we should be about.
Case in point: from time to time, I go through a period of time where I doubt my salvation. Not feeling saved, thinking "Am I saved? I should feel 'saved', right? Right?" I'll spend days wandering around in this kind of no man's land of the possibly saved, looking through books, looking through my Bible, looking for some kind of confidence builder (again) that I am. Saved, that is.
But as I was pondering, as I have been more and more over the years, about the focus of Christmas - about being on Christ, not on things - it suddenly hit me that for too much of life, I tend to focus on me. Even spiritualizing seemingly spiritual sounding problems.
It makes me realize the emphasis that Christ and the apostle Paul put on self denial, on self discipline and self control. Not there is anything spiritual per se about self control, but that it trains one to deny ones'self, to get the focus off fulfilling the flesh in even seemingly allowable things. As we deny ourselves for a greater good, we train ourselves to focus on God and His word rather than on pleasing ourselves first and foremost.
Even in spiritual things.
What I realized is that this incessant gazing at myself for the status of my salvation is just another way of making about me, rather than about God. Have questions about the state of my salvation? It's all there, in the Bible. The question is, do I take God at His word, or do I insist that He bend to my need to "feel" saved? Accepting the salvation of God, resting on His assurances give all the glory to Him. Constantly nattering on about the status of my salvation, filling some sort of emotional need to make me feel better, keeps the focus on me, not God.
I try to it on Christmas. How about the other 364 days of the year?
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