Brownback Flourish

How the Love of Christ Frees Us from Self-Focus
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4335-6068-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

What Keeps Us from Flourishing? We all long to live out our faith with daily joy, but so often that joy eludes us. Why is that? More often than we realize, it's because we've absorbed messages that curve us in on ourselves. These messages have even crept into the church, disguised as truth. It's time we learn to discern teaching that's toxic from that which is true and pure. Flourish equips us with tools to identify the lies that come at us about where to find real life. As we dig deep into what God says in his Word, we will learn to discern the worldly influences that threaten to warp our understanding of what it really means to be a Christian, and emerge with a faith that flourishes-full of the abundant life Jesus promises.

 Lydia Brownback (MAR, Westminster Theological Seminary) is the author of several books in addition to the Flourish Bible Study series, including the On-the-Go Devotionals for women; Finding God in My Loneliness; and Sing a New Song. She is a regular speaker at conferences and events and is passionate about teaching God's word.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brownback, Lydia

Leseproben

1

Set Free from Self-Consciousness

A few years ago, selfie sticks hit the market. They were the “it” Christmas gift that year for the under-thirty set (and many over thirty, as well). In fact, the selfie stick was listed in Time magazine’s twenty-five best inventions of 2014. Nothing better captures the spirit of our era than this extendable metal rod that enables people to position a camera for the taking of endless self-portraits. Some have dubbed it the “Wand of Narcissus.” And for good reason.

Selfies fuel the engine of social media. Many of us change our profile pictures weekly or even daily. Some of these are candid, in-the-moment, fun shots, but many are the result of countless takes and retakes, angling for that perfect one that sets us off to best advantage. The age of the selfie (and the fact that selfies are even a thing) allows us to influence how others answer the question we are always asking ourselves: “What do people think of me?”

By means of our clothes, our weight, our gym routine, the interior of our home, the behavior of our children, and even how we birth our children, we are so easily driven by a craving for an acceptable answer to that question. But in Christ, we are called to ask a different question: What do people think of Christ? When we are driven by a concern for how people perceive him, we can live free from the bondage of what people think of us. One of the most amazing aspects of being united to Christ by faith is that he actually becomes our very identity, but not until we grasp this truth can we enjoy the freedom of self-forgetfulness.

Dig

Freedom is the best gift a democracy offers its citizens. Those of us who have lived our whole lives under a democratic system tend to take freedom for granted. We aren’t typically filled with wonder that we are free to choose a career path, whom to marry, the size of our family, and where (and whom) to worship. But these freedoms we enjoy were hard-won, handed down to us through risk and bloodshed and wars. Our national history, however, is merely a short-lived shadow of the eternal freedom Jesus won for us when he shed his blood on the cross to free us from sin and God’s wrath. When Jesus rose from the dead and ascended back to heaven, he actually took us with him:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2:4–6)

Our life is now there, in the heavenly places with Christ. This isn’t just some spiritual concept to ponder; it’s a reality with enormous practical implications. For our purposes here, it indicates that Jesus won for us freedom from ourselves. We can take our society’s freedoms for granted and still enjoy those benefits, but not so much our spiritual freedom. If we take for granted Christ’s work for us, or if we don’t understand all he has done, we live and think like prisoners rather than free women.

I think, for example, of Sophia. Each weekday she arises at six o’clock and spends fifteen minutes sipping coffee and doing her daily Bible reading. Afterward she turns her attention to the day ahead, and she thinks about what to wear as she finishes her coffee. Thoughts of God and the Bible passage she’s just read fade from her mind as she stares at the clothes rack. Sophia is focused on the image she wants to project and how her clothing choice will be viewed by the people she’ll encounter in the hours ahead. Once dressed, accessorized, and made up, she heads downstairs for breakfast, and while she scrambles eggs for the family, she ponders whether she can afford the calories if she partakes. There’s that dress she’s got to fit into for the reunion next month, so maybe she’ll just skip the toast. And on it goes throughout the day, right up through bedtime.

But even bedtime doesn’t free Sophia from self-consciousness. The busyness of the day might be over, but these quieter moments allow her the mental space to scan back through the day’s activities and conversations for the impressions she made. Things she said or didn’t say or wish she’d said or should have said or rephrased—it’s all there once her head hits the pillow.

Sophia doesn’t see the bondage in which she’s living, but her anxieties about her appearance and her words reveal it. Sophia is so focused on herself, curved so entirely inward, that she is locked in a self-made prison. That’s what self-consciousness is—a prison. 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.

“What Will People Think of Me?”

Self-consciousness impacts the decisions we make. Our choices big and small are too often governed by What will people think of me? Our attempt to shape the answer to that question can become an internal undercurrent so relentless that we aren’t even aware of its pull. It can be there in the home furnishings we choose. It can be there in the tables we set and the planter we place on the patio. It can be there in the car we drive and the holiday decorations we choose for the front porch. And it can be there in the books we read and the restaurants we frequent and the places we choose for vacation.

Self-consciousness can also drive the decisions we make for our children. The schools they attend and the summer camps, the clothes they wear and the friends they bring home—that relentless undercurrent might be flowing somewhere beneath our very genuine mama-bear love. Angry words, shame, and impatience so easily arise from What will people think of me?

It can begin even before our children are born. As the baby grows within us, we seek advice and do research on how to be the best possible mom. We note what other mothers do and how they do it, setting standards for our mothering techniques along the way. We distinguish not only good from bad, but best from better. Sometimes, though, we wind up not only wanting to be the ideal mom but yearning to be known as that mom.

One young mother was devastated when her plans for natural, at-home childbirth could not be realized. Complications during the final weeks of pregnancy necessitated a hospital delivery. Two years later she continues to agonize. She views herself as a failure for not giving birth the way she’d envisioned. She can’t see that she didn’t fail her child, who was born healthy and continues to thrive. And she didn’t fail her Lord, who nowhere in Scripture mandates a particular method of childbirth. She failed only herself in not living up to what had become standard practice among the young mothers in her circle.

When it comes to self-conscious motherhood, the method and the means of childbirth are just the beginning. There’s also the pressure to make baby food from scratch and to use only cloth diapers. Love drives many moms to make these choices, but there are equally as many who make them because they seem to fit an ideal-mother identity. These moms can’t see that they are driven more by self-induced standards than by love, and in time all the joy leaches out of their mothering.

If we are self-conscious mothers, that undercurrent will continue to tug at us when it comes time to make decisions about schooling our children. Certainly we set out to make informed, careful choices about where and how to educate our kids, and those choices are likely to vary from child to child. As we research schooling prospects, we wisely gather opinions from more experienced parents, but what matters here is their view on education, not their view of us. I’ve known more than one depressed and angry homeschooling mother whose dark emotions had less to do with a sense of inadequacy or burnout than with the initial reason for homeschooling—the perceived expectations of others. No doubt these moms chose homeschooling because they wanted the best for their kids, but other good (perhaps better) options for their particular family were pulled down in the undertow of What will people think?

Discern

Whatever the issue—our appearance, our family, our home, our kids—we quench the joy of our faith and mar our witness of Christ if we live self-conscious lives. It seems counterintuitive, but happiness comes not from being thought well of but by thinking less of ourselves altogether.

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