OzThoughts Wednesday. 15th October 2008.

OzThoughts Wednesday. 15th October 2008.

In various ways people say we should know ourselves. There are all types of questionaries, assessments, and methods of understanding our thoughts, our motivations. Many have theories which claim to show what we are is a product of what we have been and what we will become is directed by these things.

Others will put themselves to tests of endurance, and undertake physically and mentally demanding courses. It may be a contest against others or against oneself. At the end of it will come a declaration that “I learnt al lot about myself during that time”


Paul was a tentmaker not a psychologist. He was a Rabbi not a psychiatrist. He was a Pastor not a Guru. Whatever he was Paul says it was all because of God. In the same way he says we must look at ourselves by knowing God (We are made in his image) and through a knowledge of what God does for us. As Christians we can parade titles and badges but we are only what God allows us to be and what God makes us.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, help me to know you and in that way to know myself. Help me to look to your Spirit within me that I may become what you want me to be. Help me today as I relate to others. Amen.

Meditation:

Romans 12 (The Message)

The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
4 In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around.
5 The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvellously functioning parts in Christ's body,
6 let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't.

Make me a captive, Lord,
And then I shall be free;
Force me to render up my sword,
And I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life's alarms
When by myself I stand;
Imprison me within thine arms
And strong shall be my hand.

My heart is weak and poor
Until it master find;
It has no spring of action sure,
It varies with the wind.
It cannot freely move
Till thou hast wrought its chain;
Enslave it with thy matchless love
And deathless it shall reign.

My will is not my own
Till thou hast made it thine;
If it would reach a monarch's throne
It must its crown resign;
It only stands unbent
Amid the clashing strife,
When on thy bosom it has leant
And found in thee its life.
Author: George Matheson (1842-1906)
The Salvation Army Song Book: Song Number: 508

(Note that the reference to “wind” in verse 2 is not the strong breeze that blows but the winding of a clock. It is the imagery of a cheap clock where the fast or slow time happens at various stages of the “wind”. Also “spring of action sure” and “wrought its chain” refer to the imagery of a clock like a grandfather clock that is wound by a chain with weights on the end. “Wrought” is an archaic past tense of the word “work”. We know it from “wrought iron” which is iron worked by a blacksmith, etc.).

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