The Super Surrendered Self.
Luke 9:23-25TPT.
The self is the real you, the unique person. The self is everything about you. It's your temperament, traits, personality, character, mood, thoughts, attitudes, values, and your deepest believes. The self is the internal you, the invisible you, the true person within.
My mother has made this comment to me on a few occasions: “Howard, I don't know what I'm gonna do with you.”
Mark twain said, “I've had more trouble with myself than any person I've ever met.”
Q&A: How do you manage yourself? How do you deal with yourself? What do you do with yourself?
Luke 9:23-25TPT Jesus said to all of his followers, “If you truly desire to be my disciple, you must disown your life completely, embrace my ‘cross’ as your own, and surrender to my ways. 24 For if you choose self-sacrifice, giving up your lives for my glory, you will discover true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will lose what you try to keep. 25 Even if you gained all the wealth and power of this world, and all the things it could offer you, yet lost your soul in the process, what good is that?
Socrates the philosopher said, Know thyself. Shakespeare said, To thine own self be true. The artist says, express yourself.
The Eastern Mystic says, transcend yourself. The humanist say, actualize yourself.
The externalist says, experience yourself.
The hedonist or (playboy) is a person who believes that the pursuit of pleasure is the most important thing in life; a pleasure-seeker.
The hedonist says, Indulge yourself.
The narcissist says, promote yourself.
The materialistic says, accumulate things for yourself.
Every day we have a choice:
We can decorate ourselves.
We can demean ourselves.
We can deify ourselves.
We can divide ourselves.
We can deceive ourselves and walk around in our fantasy world.
Or, we can deny ourselves, and listen to the invitation of Jesus.
In Luke chapter 9, Jesus gives His twelves disciples instructions, and authority in His name.
Listen to Luke 9:1-6NLT One day Jesus called together his twelve disciples and gave them power and authority to cast out all demons and to heal all diseases. 2 Then he sent them out to tell everyone about the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. 3 “Take nothing for your journey,” he instructed them. “Don’t take a walking stick, a traveler’s bag, food, money, or even a change of clothes. 4 Wherever you go, stay in the same house until you leave town. 5 And if a town refuses to welcome you, shake its dust from your feet as you leave to show that you have abandoned those people to their fate.”
And then Luke say’s in verse 6, So they began their circuit of the villages, preaching the Good News and healing the sick.
If you’re a child of the Most High, He has given you instructions and authority in His name.
Again, everyday you have a choice:
We can decorate ourselves.
People can decorate themselves when they live an external life, a materialistic external life.
They operate from a life of style—not substance.
Sadly, some people even take that approach to spirituality. It's all external with rituals, services, and traditions, but there's nothing going on in their hearts between them and the Lord.
Matthew 23:5, 27TPT Jesus stated, 5. Everything they do is done for show and to be noticed by others. They want to be seen as holy, so they wear oversized prayer boxes on their arms and foreheads with Scriptures inside, and wear extra-long tassels on their outer garments.
Again, Matthew 23:27TPT, Jesus states, “Great sorrow awaits you religious scholars and Pharisees—frauds and imposters! You are nothing more than tombs painted over with white paint—tombs that look shining and beautiful on the outside but filled with rotting corpses on the inside.
Jesus said to the same group of people: Matthew 15:8TPT These people honor me only with their words, for their hearts are so very distant from me.
This reminds me of a story about a man who at 75 years old lost his wife, and then decided he wanted a new season of life. So, he did a complete makeover, bought a whole new young wardrobe, and a new brand new convertible.
He met a 45-year-old woman and started dating her. They fell in love and got married. They left the marriage ceremony in his car, and on the way to their honeymoon, they had a car accident and he was killed. He was furious when he arrived in heaven, and said to the Lord, “how can you do this to me? I just started a whole new season of my life.” The Lord looked at him and did a double take. He said, “Sorry, Mike, I didn't recognize you.”
2. We can demean ourselves:
We can put ourselves down. We can criticize ourselves. We can judge ourselves. We can find every fault about ourselves. We can obsess about our faults; and we can be self focused on what we're not that it gets into our spiritual lives.
We can go into spiritual depression. We can pray, notice how much of the time is spent on ourselves. Try to pray sometime and not use the word “I” to just see how that feels.
Take notice of the Lords prayer. It does not have the word “I” in it.
Jesus prays in, Matthew 6:9-13NLT Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. 10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today the food we need, 12 and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. 13 And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.
Stop demeaning yourself! Some people have confused humility with low self-esteem.
Humility is—a sense of dependency on God. Low self-esteem means—you don't even value the person God has made you to be.
Q&A: Whatever happened to the resurrected life? What's the point of a crucifixion without a resurrection? What would the gospel of Jesus be if it had ended with a crucifixion?
We would have a very dismal message.
Our message comes with the resurrection.
Galatians 2:20KJV I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20TPT My old identity has been co-crucified with Christ and no longer lives. And now the essence of this new life is no longer mine, for the Anointed One lives his life through me—we live in union as one! My new life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God who loves me so much that he gave himself for me, dispensing his life into mine!
Listen to this word—Stop criticizing yourself, stop demeaning yourself. Instead build yourself up in the Lord.
3. We can deify ourselves:
Some see man as God, man is the measure of all things and is self-sufficient. Some people have an exalted exaggerated sense of themselves.
Narcissists are individuals who are self— absorbed and focused only on themselves to the exclusion of others.
And example from scripture of someone who was prideful and arrogant was king
Nebuchadnezzar. He was the king of Babylon whom Daniel served under.
In Daniel 4:30, we read that one day the king walked outside his palace he had built in Babylon. This man had built the famous hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. He walked out on his balcony and said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?
Daniel 4:31-32 say’s, When king Nebuchadnezzar made that arrogant boast, a voice came from heaven saying, “Your royal authority has been taken from you…until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone He wishes.”
Hear this word, “In everything raise your head toward heaven and ask for His help!”
4. We can divide ourselves:
Have you ever worked with people who lived a double life?
Jesus stated in Matthew 6:24TPT “How could you worship two gods at the same time? You will have to hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t worship the true God while enslaved to the god of money!”
The agrapha is—sayings of Jesus not in the canonical gospels but found in other New Testament or early Christian writings.
The agrapha adds, Matthew 6:24 “If you do not fast from the world, you will never discover the kingdom of God.”
5. We can deceive ourselves:
We know we can be deceived by demonic powers.
The Bible is clear about spiritual forces of evil at work in the world. In John 8:44, Jesus called satan the father of lies. Paul said in second Corinthians 4:4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
We've all been deceived and misled by people. In Matthew 24:5 Jesus stated, for many will come in my name, claiming “I am the Messiah” and will deceive many. In verse 11, Jesus stated, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. He added, for false Messiah's and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
However, the worst deception is self-deception. It's when we deceive ourselves.
We have power to completely deceive ourselves. The Bible says in, Jeremiah 17:9-10NLT “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? 10 But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.”
In 1 John 1:8NKJV, we read, 8. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
We live in a country that promotes—Tolerate sin, Don’t judge me! Secular culture say’s, “There is no right or wrong.” There's no absolute truth; it's all relative.
1 John 1:9, Becomes key—9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
6. We can deny ourselves.
Again listen to the words of Jesus in Luke 9:23-25TM Then he told them what they could expect for themselves: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?
Life can be put into a different perspective when we consider that people can decorate themselves or demeaning themselves or defied themselves or even try to save them selves.
But in, Matthew 16:24 Jesus said, “If you're going to be my disciple, I want you to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”
Self denial means to surrender—Believers must surrender their will to His will to be His disciple.
Listen, Self denial and sacrifice are taught in marriage. Why is married so difficult in America? It doesn't seem to be that difficult anywhere else in the world.
Think about this principle of self denial and sacrifice. In Ephesians 5:25, Paul writes, 25 Husbands love your wives just as Christ also Loves the church and gave Himself for her.
In closing, Evangelist Billy Graham became very popular in the early 1950s through radio and television. Of course, that's when media ministry really begin. He had a television station come to him and offer him a national program; but they wanted a secular program, something like a talk show today. They offered him $1 million contract, but he turned that down. He instead want wanted to start a Christian program that would broadcast his preaching. He wanted the name of it to be, the Billy Graham hour.
His wife, Ruth, talked with him about it. She said, “I think it would be a mistake to name your program the Billy Graham hour, and put the focus on you. She said, “I think you should call it, Hour Of Decision, and put the emphasis on Jesus.
The hour of decision broadcast around the world for decades.
When you exalt Jesus, everything in your life is going to rise with it.
Everyday, every hour, you have a choice. Will it be about you, or Jesus? Who you going to live for? P.H
Benediction.
