Life’s biggest difficulty isn’t overcoming negative circumstances. It is getting free from bondage to self. Self-interest, self-promotion, self-fulfillment, self-esteem, self-protection — these things get in our way and hold us in bondage to the torment of our own thoughts, feelings, opinions, and insecurities.
Self has a meter and like a thermometer it is always measuring our personal comfort level. How happy am I now? How satisfied, fulfilled, pleased, and/or worthy am I?
The only problem with our self-a-meter is that it never rates us high enough for long-term happiness and contentment. Even by our own self-measurements we don’t make the grade.
So what can we do about our dissatisfied self? Deny it! (Self-focus will never make you happy.) Forget about self and instead focus your life on something else — a purpose, a cause, other people’s needs, and God.
If you have the courage to do that, an amazing thing will happen. Peace, joy, love, and a flood of other fulfilling emotions will overflow you. It’s a proven fact, people are happiest when they get their mind and emotions off of self and intently focused on something else.
Is this new information.? Not by any means. Jesus said it 2,000 years ago: “Deny yourself, take up your cross (electric chair), and follow me.”
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Fill Your Mind and Your Heart With Hope 
Turn to Galatians 2:20, join yourself with the Apostle Paul and recall, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself for me.” I did not even know of this verse on May 12, 1975, but I knew that I knew I had been touched by God. With that I chose to live by faith in God, alone, with Christ as my teacher. I had never been able to read the Bible, much less study it, but now I was not only reading it, but eager to dig deeper, to insure myself that I was not going astray. These were the most fascinating days of my life, but it meant that many of my old friends began to disappear and at times, it was as if I was completely alone. Then, I would come upon a verse I had never understood and behold, a new and actually exciting understanding. I have never looked back and my life has become – as Peter writes, “joy inexpressible and full of glory”. Self is no longer a problem and I heartily recommend this new life as the ultimate answer to all of the problems of this day.
Beautiful testimony, sherwood! I have experienced something like that, too. God’s reality overcomes our addiction to self!
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