Helps and Hindrances
Separation from Selfishness
The general principle upon which self acts is, Get all you can: give as little as you can: and keep as much as you can for yourself. It thoroughly believes in the words of Shakespeare _ "I to myself am dearer than a friend"; and, "What need we any spur, but our own cause, to prick us to redress"?
But such suggested courses should not characterize the child of God, for the principle of the Gospel is against it. For those who have come to Christ, He says, "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself." This is more than mere self-denial so called, which means the denial of certain things to self. Christ's words mean the denial of self itself! This is not according to nature, but it certainly is according to grace, and can only be known as we experimentally enter into the fact, that "self" is crucified with Christ.
Some one has said, everybody has four selves: First, the self which everybody knows; second, the self which our near friends know; third, the self which we ourselves know; fourth, the self which only God knows." However much we may differentiate self, it is self in whatever relation it is found, and it ever aims at its own aggrandisement and benefit. Sin is the soil in which it grows, covetousness is the spring which causes it to act, and gain is that at which it aims.
One has said, "The essence of all immorality and sin, is the making self the center from which we subordinate all other things and interests." On the other hand, when Christ is the Center everything is subordinate to Him.
Oh, horrid self, in how many ways it seeks to show itself! It is a very chameleon in its changefulness. There is "humble self", which is very proud of its humility and, like Agag before Samuel, can fawn itself to the ground; there is the "hypocritical self" which can feign one thing and be another, like Jacob before Isaac, when he robbed his brother of his blessing; there is a "covetous self", which cares not who sinks so long as it can swim, and grabs at all it can, like Judas with the money in the bag; there is an "ambitious self" which can never be satisfied but by being at the top, like the Pharisees, who loved the uppermost seats; there is the "conceited self", which suffers with a big head and an inflated heart, and is conspicuous by the use of the personal pronoun "I", like the Pharisee praying in the temple; there is an "earnest self" which will go out of its way to carry out its designs, like Saul of Tarsus, and which prides itself on being zealous in the cause of God; and there is a "religious self", which always thinks itself holier than others, and which is ready to go to any expense in the prosecution of its own ideas, like Micah in the Book of Judges.
Separation From Praylessness
More things are lost for want of prayer than the Christian dreams of. Prayer is the key which opens the door of God's provision, therefore to want it is to be destitute of what the Lord has to give. Prayer is the atmosphere which eradicates the rays of God's love, therefore to be without is to be cold and indifferent. Prayer is the mystic wand which silvers the dark caverns of life and makes everything bright with the brightness of God's care; therefore to be without it means to be in the darkness of complaining, and in the poverty which a murmuring spirit always brings. Prayer is the switch-board which the hand of faith uses to turn on the electric current of God's energizing power; therefore to be without it is to be like Samson, shorn of his strength,and to be in the helplessness of self-effort and in the prison house of despair. Prayer is the feeder of courage, which makes us aim at the impossible and to achieve it, even s the soldier, fired by the spirit of patriotism, is regardless of consequences; therefore to be without it shows we are hiding ourselves in the den of cowardice and are guilty of faithlessness to the Lord. Prayer is the soil in which the graces of the Spirit grow to perfection and which causes them to blossom and fructify to the benefit of others; therefore not to be planted therein is to be barren of the Spirit's fruit. And prayer is the telescope which enables us to look into the heaven of God's secrets; therefore to lack it is to be in the darkness.
~F. E. Marsh~
(continued with # 9)
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