Self-Awareness and God-Awareness

The following is from a blogpost that Molly Lockwood (from the music duo in the video post earlier) wrote.  This topic is something that I have been recently convicted about and she puts it to words quite well, so I'll just link to her article for now  . . . maybe I'll write my own article on the topic sometime in the future =)

(the boldings are something I added--not to to take credit for the words written, but in case the style is distracting =) )  hyperlink is at the bottom--definitely feel free to go to the original site to read it there!)

SELF-AWARENESS AND GOD-AWARENESS 

Self-awareness, when it is unbalanced with God-awareness, is crippling to the Christian life.

• Self-awareness that is unbalanced- and please hear the emphasis on the word “unbalanced”- turns us inward; God-awareness turns us outward.

• Staring at myself (ultimately) either leads to self-righteousness OR self-hatred.  It is only a dead-end; though marked with interesting discoveries, those discoveries are no means to any end. They cannot diagnose, or give hope, or bring change.

• Staring at Jesus is the only means to a good end.  Jesus is where you and I must go to unearth the deepest realities of our identity, and Jesus is where we must go to find change.

• Self-awareness causes me to ask, after a conversation with someone, “How did she perceive me?” or in a group, “How did they see me?”

• God-awareness causes me to ask, “How does the Father see her?”

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• Self-awareness, at best, turns us outward for our own benefit… groping for feelings of honor, love, understanding, and appreciation.

• God-awareness turns us outward for others’ benefit…propelling us toward those who are marginalized, misunderstood, disliked, scorned.  We seek for others to feel honored, understood, loved, and appreciated.

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• Led by self-awareness, I will love and serve with my reputation at stake, so that I can gorge on a secret comfort-food feast of self-righteousness;

• Led by God-awareness, I will love and serve when no one is watching, or even cares…which brings about true righteousness.

• Self-awareness makes me ‘play-it-safe’ when asked hard questions.

• God-awareness makes me open and honest, because I feel His sustaining mercies swirling around me.  I have nothing to fear under His mercy’s wing.

• Self-awareness moves us toward shallow talk and chit-chat, as we obsess about finding our niche in a circle of people.

• God-awareness moves us toward the urgent and the eternal in conversation- makes us look into a person’s eyes and speak with prophetic confidence words that will edify, in the need of the moment.

• Self-awareness makes us criticize others, because we are either deeply ashamed of our own depravity, or deeply disillusioned about our own greatness.

• God-awareness makes us compassionate toward others, because we realize that His love is the great plumb line, the level, the equalizer of all people.

• Led by Self-awareness, we live afraid that we will mess everything up.

• Led by God-awareness, we live boldly dependent on His resources, sure that they never run out.

• Self-awareness carries an attitude of defensiveness…  always trying to push up to the front of the line and prove ourselves.

• God-awareness produces humility, because we’re so in awe of His beauty that we can’t take our eyes off Him and put them on ourselves, even for a second.

• Isolated self-awareness sees MY NEED right now.

• God-awareness sees the KINGDOM NEED right now.

• Self-awareness robs our thought life… trapping us on a ferris wheel of analysis, critique, philosophies.

• God-awareness liberates our thought life… to be Spirit-led, spontaneous, surprising, and supernatural.

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”  John 3:30

Self-Awareness and God-Awareness


Definitely an article I will be rereading and reflecting on in the coming days . . .