Home > Work > Flourish: How the Love of Christ Frees Us from Self-Focus
1 " An obsessive preoccupation with what others will think and a paralyzing fear of failure go hand in hand, and both are symptoms of a hyper-examined life. Many living a hyper-examined life will flit and float from job to job, from friend to friend, from place to place. This may seem adventurous at first, but what’s often behind this rootlessness is a compulsive need for satisfaction in every season of life. Instead of losing themselves in the joys of the mundane, the regular, and the everyday, these wandering souls constantly search their own emotional state for happiness—not realizing that such preoccupation with self is exactly what tends to kill happiness in the first place.10 "
― Lydia Brownback , Flourish: How the Love of Christ Frees Us from Self-Focus
2 " Times of difficulty arise because people are lovers of themselves and lovers of money and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of good and lovers of God. "
3 " Any teaching that sets self-love as the highest good is false teaching, and we are susceptible to it because it appeals to that deep yearning for affirmation we feel at our very core. That’s why it hooks us. "
4 " If we center our thoughts and activities on ourselves, our world grows increasingly narrow, and over time our view of reality is warped. Without realizing it, we become the measure of all things in our own minds. "
5 " Improving ourselves is not the sacrifice the Lord calls us to. "
6 " The way out of the bondage of self-improvement is to recognize that in Christ, there is none of that old self left to improve. We can simply let go of all that. "
7 " What we focus on defines us, so if our focus is inward, on ourselves, we wind up defining for ourselves whether we are righteous or guilty. When we begin and end with us—with our self— we miss the heart of the gospel and never truly find the freedom for which we ache. "
8 " What begins as self-care can morph into habits of laziness, where we are unwilling to exert ourselves without some pleasurable comfort as an accompaniment. "
9 " As a result, we don’t see anything wrong with aiming more at personal gratification than at God’s glory in the plans and choices we make, in some part because we believe that our earthly happiness is the primary way God’s glory is revealed. "
10 " Chocolate and wine and fun weekend are delightful gifts indeed, and God is glorified when we partake with joy and gratitude. But viewing these blessings as necessities is self-indulgent. If we demand them as rights, they will enslave us, evaporating the delight and glory they were meant to convey. No one actually needs a spa day or wine or chocolate or even a vacation. "
11 " Self-indulging is how we worship the idol of comfort, and orienting our lives on whatever promises to provide it in the fastest, easiest, most enjoyable way is how we bow down. As with any kind of idol, the appeal to immediate gratification is why self-indulgence snares us. "
12 " All forms of sinful self-indulgence spring from an ungrateful heart. If we live to gratify ourselves with comfort or pleasure of whatever kind, it's because we believe that God is not enough for us. In some hidden recess of our heart, we judge him insufficient when he fails to meet our personal expectations of what we want and think we deserve. "
13 " As we keep in step with the Spirit, our thinking changes, and the craving to self-indulge begins to die. And our hearts are humbled, which enables us to see God for who he is and everything we have as a gift. Gratitude to God - not just words of thanks but a heart-deep belief - makes self-indulgence meaningless. "
