Free Of Me: Why Life Is Better When It’s Not All About YouSample

The Unexpected Joy of Dying to Self

In recent years, as God has lovingly crucified my self-focus, it’s nearly tore me in two. But God wasn’t interested in numbing my pain with encouraging words, even with words that were true. Instead, he was interested in making me better—making me entirely new—and that meant putting to death the things inside me that were making me sick. 

God has no use for clichés that make us feel good in the moment. Not if they keep us from dying so that we can truly live. He is equally uninterested in reinforcing self-deception by allowing us to deny our own sickness. God wants us to see the parts of ourselves that are broken, so that we welcome his healing instead of denying we need it. 

Insecurities feed us lies about ourselves and our worth, but they also reveal truths about our idols, our misplaced focus, or our misplaced priorities. Insecurity is a sign of spiritual sickness, and until we can admit that and confess it, we will never address the source of the pain. Nice words about our belonging only hide it for a while.

In the hands of the Great Physician, God can use pain and insecurity for our benefit. He can use them to humble us, to teach us, to grow us. He shows us the idols we’re hiding and wrests them from our tired hands. 

That is the strange, surprising, upside-down good news of Jesus Christ. Whenever you feel like a failure or a hack, whenever you worry that you’re not a good parent or spouse, whenever you fear you’re not enough or that you can’t keep up with it all, there is a sense in which God responds, “Yes, that’s true.” And this is, amazingly, good news. You can be a failure. You can be “not enough.” And then you can stop trying to make yourself big enough or capable enough to carry the weight of the world, because God never designed you to do it. Once you realize that, you finally taste the freedom of no longer trying to be what only God can be. 

The gift of smallness, of humility, of dying to self—it comes in an ugly package, but the most beautiful treasure is inside. 

What are the differences between a worldly approach to a “true self” and a godly approach?

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