Self Awareness vs. Christ-awarness

My Utmost for His Highest - August 20

“Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, "Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already." Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute…..If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, "Come to Me . . . and I will give you rest," that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest— the rest of the completion of activity in our lives that is never aware of itself.”

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I believe this to be a plague in the modern American - including the plague in my own heart. Self-Awareness always begins with SELF...isn't there a magazine called "Self"?... We are (I am) self-focused, self-centered, self-important, self-confident, self-sustaining, self-indulgent, self-motivated, self-made, self-corrected, self-loved. It is very interesting to me the Oswald Chambers calls "Self-Pity" satanic - I completely agree. If we are trusting in ourselves, we are not trusting in God. If we are focused on ourselves, we cannot focus on God nor on what calls us to focused on - namley others. That is why the second chapter of Philippians so stings my conscience - "2:5-8 -Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! Christ, the King of Kings, the creator of everything, the Everlasting God - humbles himself - becoming human and subjecting himself to our mistreatment and finally our execution. Christ is the ultimate example of humility. From the manger, to the footwashing, to the thorns, to trash dump where he was killed. He subjected himself to God's will - gave his Self up to God's will. Maybe that is why so many Christians talk about dying to their selves. Paul says to the Ephesians - 4:21 - You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds. It seems a bit disheartening as I think about dying to myself, but I don't think that God is intending us to lose any uniqueness of our individuality - Christ gives us our true self back. Isn't that really the whole story of Christianity. God, so loved you, that he sought to give you a new identity, a new family status, a new name, a new hope. He gives you everything you can't give yourself. As we lose our self-awarness and become Christ-Aware we find our true identity. In Christ we find rest, and more importantly we find purpose. Things make sense. Things are right. I can worship. I can hope. I can love. Because it is not me that has to make it right - it is Christ in me - my true identity.