No Self-Importance...No Offense Nor Defeat

"He who has no sense of self-importance cannot be offended or defeated." ~ W. Phillip Keller

Are you easily offended or feeling defeated? I will admit that I am a sensitive person; I cry easily :). Sometimes I get defensive and once in a while, I throw a self-pity party. "Poor me!" "Me" is the key, isn't it? Self-importance means an overly high opinion of one's own importance (according to the American Heritage Desk Dictionary). It is equivalent to pride (an excessively high opinion of oneself) and arrogance. What happens when we are offended or defeated? Our pride gets hurt, doesn't it? Ouch! Our "self-importance" gets deflated.

What if we have no sense of self-importance? What if we die to self daily? What if we humble ourselves before the Lord and in humility consider others better than ourselves? Would that be an antidote to being offended and defeated? I think this quote by A.W.Tozer explains it well: "Humble yourself and cease to care what men think. A meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather,...he has stopped being fooled about himself. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring. He has obtained a place of soul rest. The old struggle to defend himself is over."

Having no sense of self-importance does not mean self-hatred or having no self-respect. Some people go overboard the other way. Sadly, they still feel offended and defeated even when they don't think highly of themselves at all. In my opinion, both self-elevation and self-defeat are forms of pride. Both show that we think we know better than God because we believe what we or others think about ourselves, not what God thinks. Both also reflect self-centeredness. We need to move away from self-centeredness towards Christ-centeredness. The cure for poor I-sight (the term I heard from Max Lucado) is dying to self daily and seeing ourselves as God sees us. Our identity is in Christ. We won't be so easily offended or defeated when we realize who we are in Christ and our goal is to glorify Him, not self.

"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." ~Proverbs 16:18
"He who covers over an offense promotes love." ~Proverbs 17:9a


~You're invited to share your thoughts about the quote above on your blog and then link up your post here.To learn more about "In Other Words"(what it's about, how it works, and how it originated), visit here.
 


Note: I won't be having any internet access for about a week (starting tomorrow); therefore, I will not be able to visit your blogs and comment on your posts until next week. Thanks for your understanding :)!