Pastor's Blog

Quote from the audio message, "Release to God's Ultimate."

Let me just give you a little portrait of self-love. I’ve lived in self-love, I grew up in it. Partly because of my family circumstances. I was born into a well-to-do family and I was the only child, I had no brothers or sisters. So everything revolved around me. I was successful at school all my school days, always top of the class, all sorts of distinctions. So you know, the whole family revolved around “dear little Derek.” And I never really was challenged to deny myself. I didn’t have brothers or sisters to share my toys with or to let go to the bathroom before me. There was just no competition. And I’ll tell you the marks of self-love. One distinctive mark of self-love is boredom. Life is never really interesting. And no matter how much you pursue what you want, you are never satisfied. Absolutely never. And you tend to blame somebody or something else. My parents weren’t good enough to me, society doesn’t treat me right, my boss isn’t good to me. Oh, I recognize all those marks so clearly and I see them in so many people around me. And the root of that is self-love.

Now, the remedy for self-love has been stated. “Let him deny himself.” The word deny is not a complicated word. It means to say no. So when self says, “I want,” you say no. That’s very simple. You deny the demands of self. That’s to deny yourself.