[Friday's Devotional] - A Right Perspective of Self

A Right Perspective of Self In Jesus we have a sense of belonging to God's family – He teaches us that God is a loving father and we are his children. We have a sense of worth - Jesus' love for us that ultimately led to him stretching his arms out in love on the cross for us.   A right perspective of self means understanding who you are with your strengths and weaknesses. If you know who you are in Christ, you can accept your weaknesses and mistakes and work through them, with God's guidance through the Holy Spirit, without comparing yourself to some impossible standard of perfection – someone once wrote "If you find a perfect church don't join it or it will cease to be perfect."   We have a sense of completeness -  The Holy Spirit working in, through and with us restoring us to the new creations.   Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."   ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity   Guy Mowbray   Twitter Website Copyright © 2017 St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email as a subscriber to the Daily Devotionals Our mailing address is: St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church 1a New Street Rugby, Warwickshire CV22 7BE United Kingdom Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list Want to be added to our mailing list? - sign up here!